The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner. – 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 city of cats and the city of men exist one inside the other, but they are not the same city. – Italo Calvino
We make a mistake forsaking England and moving out into the periphery of life. After all, Taormina, Ceylon, Africa, America — as far as we go, they are only the negation of what we ourselves stand for and are: and were rather like Jonahs running away from the place we belong. – D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence