Italo Calvino Quotes

My parents are creative on many fronts, and they pushed me to be that way, too. They wanted me to write, actually.

Art is not in some far-off place. A work of art is the expression of a man's whole personality, sensibility and ability.

If I were to have a dream job, it would probably be a poet. Then again, I don't think I'm a very good poet!

I don't want security guards. I don't think security guards are particularly good for your writing.

I can paint in jail.

My favorite thing is to be alone in a room with a blank paper in front of me and the time to fill it.

I'm constantly creating and writing.

Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.

As an artist, everybody has the opportunity to celebrate and speak their truth.

As an aspiring artist, you should strive for originality of vision. Have something to say and a fresh way of saying it. No story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it’s not the work of the imagination.

There's no one on the island telling them they're not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write.

Criticism - however valid or intellectually engaging - tends to get in the way of a writer who has anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require practice, but if he starts a theory of equilibrium he will lose grace (and probably fall off).

A friend of mine who writes history books said to me that he thought that the two creatures most to be pitied were the spider and the novelist - their lives hanging by a thread spun out of their own guts. But in some ways I think writers of fiction are the creatures most to be envied, because who else besides the spider is allowed to take that fragile thread and weave it into a pattern? What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it to create some semblance of order.

When you write, don't say, "I'm going to write a poem." That attitude will freeze you right away. Sit down with the least expectation of yourself; say, "I am free to write the worst junk in the world."

He is exactly the poem I wanted to write.

While I'm writing, I'm far away; and when I come back, I've gone.

I feel so fortunate to get paid to be an actor. I pinch myself. I get it from writing, I get it from baking, gardening... I sort of open myself to the creative flow, which is hard to do, by the way.

I don't know where my ideas come from, but I know where they come to. They come to my desk, and if I'm not there, they go away again.

Writing is like sex. The more you think about it, the harder it is to do. It's better not to think about it so much and just let it happen.

Keep me up till five because all your stars are out, and for no other reason…Oh dare to do it Buddy! Trust your heart. You’re a deserving craftsman. It would never betray you. Good night. I’m feeling very much over-excited now, and a little dramatic, but I think I’d give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after your own heart.

When we are writing, or painting, or composing, we are, during the time of creativity, freed from normal restrictions, and are opened to a wider world, where colors are brighter, sounds clearer, and people more wondrously complex than we normally realize.

A reason I became a writer was to escape the hopelessness and despair of the real world and enter the world of hope I could create with my imagination.

You don't want to spend your time around people who make you hold your breath. You can't fill up when you're holding your breath. And writing is about filling up, filling up when you are empty, letting images and ideas and smells run down like water - just as writing is also about dealing with the emptiness.

[Margot Hentoff] stopped [writing]. She decided that she had nothing more to say. And yet, every day, she has a whole lot to say, and I wish she'd write it down.