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"If I were to draw, I would apply myself only to studying the form of inanimate objects,' I said somewhat imperiously, because I wanted to change the subjects and also because a natural inclination does truly lead me to recognise my moods in the motionless suffering of things."
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"The answers to your problems lie all around you. The keys to your self-discovery are waiting to be found in each sunset, each pair of eyes, each breath of fresh air. Listen to the symphony of life and you will hear yourself. Find the beauty of nature and you have found your soul."

"People just weren't interesting. Maybe they weren't supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn't understand it."

"It's strange to see people you don't know well in the morning, with sleepy eyes and pillow creases in their cheeks."

"I give her my best smile. Before the alien Armageddon happened, I was known for my smile. Not bragging too much, but I had to be careful never to smile while I drove. It had the capacity to blind oncoming traffic. But it has absolutely no effect on Ringer. She doesn't squint in its overwhelming luminescence. She doesn't even blink."

"The whole of the world could be deduced from the smallest grain of sand, if one studied it closely enough."

"Most people spend less time outside than prisoners."

"The Republic's most wanted criminal is just a boy, sitting before me, suddenly vulnerable, laying all his weaknesses out for me to see."

"I believe in spectacles, but I think eyes necessary too."

"Snap your fingerstop the world - rain falls harder."

"His eyes said what I cannot see."
Explore more quotes by Italo Calvino

"The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to be born. When the forms exhaust their variety and come apart, the end of cities begins."

"The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted to, yet he is forced by attraction to concern himself with the world that repels him."

"Though I leave the house as little as possible, I have the impression that someone is disturbing my papers. More than once I have discovered that some pages were missing from my manuscripts. A few days afterward I would find the pages in their place again. But often I no longer recognize my manuscripts, as if I had forgotten what I had written, or as if overnight I were so changed that no longer recognized myself in the self of yesterday."

"We'll make an army in the trees and bring the earth and the people on it to their senses."

"Her breast was young, the nipples rosy. Cosimo just grazed it with his lips, before Viola slid away over the branches as if she were flying, with him clambering after her, and that skirt of hers always in his face."
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