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
How well I would write if I were not here!
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the paradox of creativity and presence.
Italo Calvino's quote suggests that the act of creation can often be hindered by the realities of one's circumstances. The longing for ideal conditions for writing highlights the struggle between the desire to express oneself and the distractions or limitations imposed by one's current situation.
In practice
In a writing workshop to inspire participants.
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.
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.
...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.
Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do.
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.
An artist is someone who can hold two opposing viewpoints and still remain fully functional.
Let no one imagine that in owning a recording he has the music. The very practice of music is a celebration that we own nothing.
Art doesn't go to sleep in the bed made for it. It would sooner run away than say its own name: what it likes is to be incognito. Its best moments are when it forgets what its own name is.
I am carried in my shadow like a violin in its black case
I don't usually give out advice or recipes, but you must let the person looking at the photograph go some of the way to finishing it. You should offer them a seed that will grow and open up their minds.
My rhymes are like shot clocks,_x000D_ interstate cops_x000D_ and blood clots,_x000D_ my point is your flow gets stopped.
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