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
The lives of individuals of the human race form a constant plot, in which every attempt to isolate one piece of living that has a meaning separate from the rest-for example, the meeting of two people, which will become decisive for both-must bear in mind that each of the two brings with himself a texture of events, environments, other people, and that from the meeting, in turn, other stories will be derived which will break off from their common story.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Human lives are interconnected, and every encounter influences a larger narrative.
This quote by Italo Calvino underscores the idea that individual lives do not exist in isolation but rather as part of a complex web of relationships and experiences. Each interaction between people carries the weight of their own histories and backgrounds, influencing the outcome of their connection and contributing to an ongoing narrative that affects others as well. Thus, every significant meeting is a pivotal event that can lead to new stories branching out from the shared experience.
Themes
ConnectionInterpersonalRelationshipsNarrativeHistory
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about the importance of relationships at a community event.
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.
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...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.
Italo CalvinoRead
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