Myth is the hidden part of every story, the buried part, the region that is still unexplored because there are as yet no words to enable us to get there. Myth is nourished by silence as well as by words. – 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
The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted to, yet he is forced by attraction to concern himself with the world that repels him. – Italo Calvino
Dig a trench through a landfill and you will see layers of phone books like geographical strata or layers of cake…. During a recent landfill dig in Phoenix, I found newspapers dating from 1952 that looked so fresh you might read one over breakfast. – William Rathje, The Economist, 8 September 1990