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
It was the hour in which objects lose the consistency of shadow that accompanies them during the night and gradually reacquire colors, but seem to cross meanwhile an uncertain limbo, faintly touched, just breathed on by light; the hour in which one is least certain of the world's existence.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on a transitional moment that blurs reality and perception.
Italo Calvino's quote captures a fleeting moment at dawn when the world transitions from darkness to light, symbolizing a state of uncertainty and ambiguity. This hour represents both a literal and metaphorical limbo where the familiar begins to take shape but remains elusive, inviting contemplation about existence and perception.
Themes
AmbiguityPerceptionExistenceDawnUncertainty
In practice
Example use cases
In a philosophical discussion about reality and perception, one might use this quote to illustrate the nature of uncertainty.
More from Italo Calvino
All quotes →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.
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Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do.
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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.
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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.
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