
“You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living. Or, perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.” 8. Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Memory’s images, once they are fixed in words, are erased. A journalist, short story writer and novelist, Calvino’s best bet came with his the ‘Cosmicomics’ collection of short stories, the novels ‘Invisible Cities’ and ‘If on a winters night a traveler’ and ‘Our Ancestors’ trilogy. “Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice. Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no. Italo Calvino was one of the best Italian fiction writers of the 20th century whose TRP rested in his whimsical and imaginative fables. “The bridge is not supported by one stone or another, but by the line of the arch that they form. “If you want to know how much darkness there is around you, you must sharpen your eyes, peering at the faint lights in the distance.” 6. “It is not so much copulating or murdering that matters as the copulating or murdering of the images, limpid and cold in the mirror.” 5. “You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in the answer it gives to a question of yours.” 4.

“The traveler’s past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, but the more remote past.” 3.
ITALO CALVINO INVISIBLE CITIES QUOTES DRIVER
In the coastline’s haze, the sailor discerns the form of a camel’s withers, an embroidered saddle with glittering fringe between two spotted humps, advancing and swaying he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a camel from whose pack hang wine-skins and bags of candied fruit, date wine, tobacco leaves, and already he sees himself at the head of a long caravan taking him away from the desert of the sea, toward oases of fresh water in the palm trees’ jagged shade, toward palaces of thick, whitewashed walls, tiled courts where girls are dancing barefoot, moving their arms, half-hidden by their veils, and half-revealed.Įach city receives its form from the desert it opposes and so the camel driver and the sailor see Despina, a border city between two deserts.“Memory is redundant: it repeats signs so that the city can begin to exist.” 2. When the camel driver sees, at the horizon of the tableland, the pinnacles of the skyscrapers come into view, the radar antennae, the white and red wind-socks flapping, the chimneys belching smoke, he thinks of a ship he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a vessel that will take him away from the desert, a windjammer about to cast off, with the breeze already swelling the sails, not yet unfurled, or a steamboat with its boiler vibrating in the iron keel and he thinks of all the ports, the foreign merchandise the cranes unload on the docks, the taverns where crews of different flags break bottles over one another’s heads, the lighted, ground-floor windows, each with a woman combing her hair.

The city displays one face to the traveler arriving overland and a different one to him who arrives by sea. “Despina can be reached in two ways: by ship or by camel. They know the net will only last so long.” Suspended over the abyss, the life of Octavia's inhabitants is less uncertain than in other cities.

All the rest, instead of rising up, is hung below: rope ladders, hammocks, houses made like sacks, clothes hangers, terraces like gondolas, skins of water, gas jets, spits, baskets on strings, dumb-waiters, showers, trapezes and rings for children's games, cable cars, chandeliers, pots with trailing plants. This is the foundation of the city: a net which serves as passage and as support. Add Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities quotes picures as your mobile or desktop wallpaper or screensaver. Explore Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities quotes images.
ITALO CALVINO INVISIBLE CITIES QUOTES FREE
Below there is nothing for hundreds and hundreds of feet: a few clouds glide past farther down you can glimpse the chasm's bed. Find, download, or share Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities quotes images from our best and free collection. You walk on the little wooden ties, careful not to set your foot in the open spaces, or you cling to the hempen strands. There is a precipice between two steep mountains: the city is over the void, bound to the two crests with ropes and chains and catwalks. Now I will tell you how Octavia, the spider-web city, is made.
