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 ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner. – Italo Calvino
When politicians and politically minded people pay too much attention to literature, it is a bad sign — a bad sign mostly for literature. But it is also a bad sign when they dont want to hear the word mentioned. – Italo Calvino
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
I think Bach is equally a romantic composer because he laid the seeds harmonically for people like Chopin and the great Romantics, Brahms, so its difficult to you know all this like labelling and putting – I think Bach is attractive to musicians because he supersedes the labels. – Nigel Kennedy