Italo Calvino Quotes

I sometimes fall into the trap of doing what I think I should be doing rather than what I want to be doing.

My life had no meaning at all. I found only brief interludes of satisfaction. It was like my whole life had been about my whole basketball career.

But he who dies in despair has lived his whole life in vain.

I don't have a life, I really don't. I'm as close to a nun as you can be without the little hat. I'm a golf nun.

You can sell millions of records, be showered with all this love and admiration and still feel despised and unwanted. That's what I felt. I've made a lot of mistakes I'm not proud of.

I know a lot of very rich, very successful, very lonely women in Los Angeles, and I never wanted to be one of them.

I can relate to having those people in your life that you feel are moving on to this great, big, normal life and you're like, 'What's wrong with me?'

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation..

My father did not rock. He just earned and hated. Don't end up like this man.

Growing up, I didn't know where I was headed, except to the grave or maybe to the gutter. I went through wanting to do a lot of things, but acting wasn't one of them.

When I went through my life, I was like, 'I sit around and play video games all day. Nobody wants to hear about this.'

The first thing that happens to someone with a mental illness, in the throes of it, is that they lose all their self-esteem. They don't think they fit in.

I was working in cartoons. I could go to Comic-Con, buy the Hal Jordan ring, I could buy animation cels, but at the end of the day, I come back to an empty apartment. I had a life that was only around me, and when I was broken, my world was broken.

As a kid, I grew to define what I didn't want my life to be like by sitting behind moaning women on the bus, hearing them bang on about their aches and pains, both real and imagined.

How hard could it be? Is it really going to hurt? You get into that deep well of emotion if you are by yourself. Why am I here? What's the point of going on? If I can't do what I want to do, then what's the point?

This life of being a transient human being has gotten to a point when it's very hard to bear.

I feel a kinship with anyone who feels that their road, their life or who they really are is not good enough. I really relate to that.

There were times when I've not wanted to be in my own skin, and that's a very scary feeling.

Sometimes I feel my whole life has been one big rejection.

Selfishness, narcissism, being uncomfortable in your own skin, not feeling connected to the world around you, feeling dislocated from family and youth, having a strange relationship with your childhood - all those things feel really true to me.

Why is it you feel like a dope if you laugh alone, but that's usually how you end up crying?

I dreaded having a boring life when I grew up. And I certainly can't complain about being bored.

I'm not such a nuisance to the world, and the kick I get out of living can, I suppose, justify the impositions I make on it. But when life isn't so fun, well, then I start to wonder. What's the point of going on if it's just trouble for us both? My friends will miss me, I am told.

Living, it's awful for me.

I'm not invited to any exciting parties and my life hasn't really changed.