Italo Calvino quotes about expectation
Italian Journalist, Writer October 15, 1923 – September 19, 1985
Italo Calvino quotes in frenchItalo Calvino quotes in russian
Italo Calvino quotes in german
Cite this Page: Citation
Quotes
I speak and speak,” Marco says, “but the listener retains only the words he is expecting. The description of the world to which you lend a benevolent ear is one thing; the description that will go the rounds of the groups of stevedores and gondoliers on the street outside my house the day of my return is another; and yet another, that which I might dictate late in life, if I were taken prisoner by Genoese pirates and put in irons in the same cell with a writer of adventure stories. It is not...
Italo Calvino
You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. But not you. You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst.
Italo Calvino
What about books? Well, precisely because you have denied it in every other field, you believe you may still grant yourself legitimately this youthful pleasure of expectation in a carefully circumscribed area like the field of books, where you can be lucky or unlucky, but the risk of disappointment isn't serious.
Italo Calvino
Popular Author
Related Authors
-
AB
Ambrose Bierce Journalist, Writer
-
Campbell Scott Actor
-
Daniel Defoe Journalist, Writer
-
Hunter S. Thompson Journalist, Writer
-
Isaac Babel Journalist, Writer
-
IC
Italo Calvino Journalist, Writer
-
JH
Jeff Hawkins Inventor
-
MH
Matthew Hale Historian
-
PK
Pauline Kael Critic
-
TW
Tom Wolfe Journalist, Writer