QuoteProject
Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears, even if the thread of their discourse is secret, their rules are absurd, their perspectives deceitful, and everything conceals something else.
Italo Calvino
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Cities are complex entities shaped by human emotions and hidden truths.

Italo Calvino's quote highlights the intricate nature of cities, comparing them to dreams that are influenced by our desires and fears. The statement suggests that while cities may have an outward appearance that appears logical, they are actually governed by irrational rules and deceptive perspectives, hiding layers of meaning and complexity beneath their surface.

Themes

CitiesDreamsDesiresFearsPerspectivesComplexity

In practice

Example use cases

Use this quote in a discussion about urban development and the emotional impact of city life.

More from Italo Calvino

The novels that attract me most are those that create an illusion of transparency around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel, and perverse as possible.
Italo CalvinoRead
Your first book is the only one that matters. Perhaps a writer should write only that one. That is the one moment when you make the big leap; the opportunity to express yourself is offered that once, and you untie the knot within you then or never again.
Italo CalvinoRead
...and every Wednesday the perfumed young lady slips me a hundred-crown note to leave her alone with the convict. And by Thursday the hundred crowns are already gone in so much beer. And when the visiting hour is over, the young lady comes out with the stink of jail in her elegant clothes; and the prisoner goes back to his cell with the lady's perfume in his jailbird's suit. And I'm left with the smell of beer. Life is nothing but trading smells.
Italo CalvinoRead
Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do.
Italo CalvinoRead
The struggle of literature is in fact a struggle to escape from the confines of language; it stretches out from the utmost limits of what can be said; what stirs literature is the call and attraction of what is not in the dictionary.
Italo CalvinoRead
Fantasy is like jam. . . . You have to spread it on a solid piece of bread. If not, it remains a shapeless thing . . . out of which you can’t make anything.
Italo CalvinoRead

Similar quotes

A man builds a house in England with the expectation of living in it and leaving it to his children; we shed our houses in America as easily as a snail does his shell.
Harriet Beecher StoweRead
What use is it to us to hear it said of a man that he has thrown off the yoke that he does not believe there is a God to watch over his actions, that he reckons himself the sole master of his behavior, and that he does not intend to give an account of it to anyone but himself?
Blaise PascalRead
Religion is doing; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he 'lives' his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy.
G. I. GurdjieffRead
We must not confuse the present with the past. With regard to the past, no further action is possible.
Simone De BeauvoirRead
Any man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.
Graham GreeneRead
Until we Dream of Life and Life becomes a Dream.
Stevie WonderRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.