# Italo Calvino's most famous quotes

From the classic that "has never finished saying what it has to say" to cities made of desires and fears: Italo Calvino's most quoted lines, with the book they come from.

- 2 votes · 11 items
- Dec 17, 2024 · C. Martino
- https://even.best/en/l/4915/italo-calvino-s-most-famous-quotes

## Top 11

1. **The ideal place for me is the one in which it is most natural to live as a foreigner.** (1 · ▲1 ▼0) — Hermit in Paris (1994).
2. **A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Why Read the Classics? (1991).
3. **Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Invisible Cities (1972).
4. **The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Invisible Cities (1972), ending.
5. **It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Invisible Cities (1972).
6. **Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Invisible Cities (1972).
7. **Whoever wants to see the earth properly must keep at the necessary distance.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — The Baron in the Trees (1957).
8. **I shall uphold the values of lightness.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Six Memos for the Next Millennium (1988), "Lightness".
9. **In eros as in gluttony, pleasure is made of precision.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — Introduction to Fourier, The Theory of the Four Movements (1971).
10. **I am the black sheep, the only man of letters in the family.** (0 · ▲0 ▼0) — In Ritratti su misura di scrittori italiani (1960).
11. **You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax.** (-1 · ▲0 ▼1) — If on a winter's night a traveler (1979), opening.

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.