Humor Quote by Italo Calvino — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“I was living and dying in all the fibers of what is chewed and digested and in all the fibers that absorb the sun, consuming and digesting. Under the thatched arbor of a restaurant on a river-bank, where Olivia had waited for me, our teeth began to move slowly, with equal rhythm, and our eyes stared into each other's with the intensity of serpents'—serpents concentrated in the ecstasy of swallowing each other in turn, as we were aware, in our turn, of being swallowed by the serpent that digests us all, assimilated ceaselessly in the process of ingestion and digestion, in the universal cannibalism that leaves its imprint on every amorous relationship and erases the lines between our bodies and sopa de frijoles, huachinango a la vera cru-zana, and enchiladas.”

“Falsehood is never in words; it is in things.”

“It's better not to know authors personally, because the real person never corresponds to the image you form of him from reading his books.”

“What is more natural than that a solidity, a complicity, a bond should be established between Reader and Reader, thanks to the book?”

“The person who writes for fools is always sure of a large audience.”

“I don't mind foreigners. God save the queen!" he squeaked and ran.”

“There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.”

“It was amazing how many books one could fit into a room, assuming one didn't want to move around very much.”

“At first, I could lie about my lack of sleep and she'd fall for it, but she started suspecting insomnia when I began seeing purple elephants in the air vents at the office. I knew I shouldn't have asked her about them. I thought maybe she'd redecorated.”

“I was watching a collection of vintage '80s cereal commercials when I paused to wonder why cereal manufacturers no longer included toy prizes inside every box. It was a tragedy, in my opinion. Another sign that civilization was going straight down the tubes.”