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.
Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do.
Interpretation
What this quote means
In oppressive regimes, the written word is both revered and controlled, highlighting its power and danger.
Italo Calvino's quote reflects the paradox of police states that often place immense value on written texts, as they can be powerful tools for both propaganda and manipulation. In such societies, the written word is not only a vehicle for communication but also a means of exerting control, as authorities seek to regulate, censor, or promote narratives that serve their interests, thus revealing a complex relationship between literacy and power.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on censorship, one may cite this quote to illustrate how oppressive regimes value control over expression.
More from Italo Calvino
All quotes βYour 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.
...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.
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.
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 canβt make anything.
Work stops at sunset. Darkness falls over the building site. The sky is filled with stars. "There is the blueprint," they say.
Similar quotes
Man has two great spiritual needs. One is for forgiveness. The other is for goodness.
I don't think anyone is qualified to answer questions of eternal fate definitively, much less pinpoint it to a given day.
So about 80 years after the Constitution is ratified, the slaves are freed. Not so you'd really notice it of course; just kinda on paper. And that of course was at the end of the Civil War. Now there is another phrase I dearly love. That is a true oxymoron if I've ever heard one: "Civil War." Do you think anybody in this country could ever really have a civil war? "Say, pardon me?" (shoots gun) "I'm awfully sorry. Awfully sorry."
He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him, but the ones who went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas.
The Absolute and the Infinite can become this universe only by limitation.
Strictly speaking, no activity and no industry is possible without a certain amount of violence, no matter how little. Even the very process of living is impossible without a certain amount of violence. What we have to do is to minimize it to the greatest extent possible.