Everything can change, but not the language that we carry inside us, like a world more exclusive and final than ones mothers womb. – Italo Calvino
What Romantic terminology called genius or talent or inspiration is nothing other than finding the right road empirically, following ones nose, taking shortcuts. – Italo Calvino
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 Calvino
The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner. – Italo Calvino
Older fatherhood isnt all bad: testosterone rates drop about 1% per year as men age, making them less reactive and more patient, and a professionally established middle-aged man is likely to have more time and money to devote to his kids than a twenty-something whos just getting started. – Jeffrey Kluger