March 28, 2013
"Reading, he says, is this: there is a thing that is there, a thing made of writing, a solid, material object, which cannot be changed, and through this thing we measure ourselves against something else that is not present, something else that belongs to the immaterial, invisible world, because it can only be thought, imagined, or because it was once and is no longer, past, lost, unattainable, in the land of the dead…"

— If on a winter’s night a traveler - Italo Calvino (via libroabrazos)

March 15, 2013
"Opening a path for yourself, with a sword’s blade, in the barrier of pages becoes linked with the thought of how much the world contains and conceals: you cut your way through your reading as if through a dense forest."

— If on a winter’s night a traveler - Italo Calvino (via libroabrazos)

February 18, 2013
"Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be…"

— If on a winter’s night a traveler - Italo Calvino (via libroabrazos)

February 4, 2013

(Source: bookshavepores)

January 14, 2013
"In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven’t Read, which are frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you…And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You’ll Wait Till They’re Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out in Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them, Too."

— Italo Calvino, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler (via talkativolive)

December 11, 2012
anecdotaljar:

“The nights are beautiful and missiles cross the summer sky.”

anecdotaljar:

“The nights are beautiful and missiles cross the summer sky.”

12:55pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/Z6TqsxZ8TFfj
  
Filed under: Italo Calvino 
December 10, 2012

(Source: anecdotaljar)

July 11, 2012
"The classics are those books about which you usually hear people saying: ‘I’m rereading…’, never ‘I’m reading….’"

Italo Calvino (via bookshavepores)