Italo Calvino - Speak Quotes

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Perhaps everything lies in knowing what words to speak, what actions to perform, and in what order and rhythm; or else someone's gaze, answer, gesture is enough; it is enough for someone to do something for the sheer pleasure of doing it, and for his pleasure to become the pleasure of others: at that moment, all spaces change, all heights, distances; the city is transfigured, becomes crystalline, transparent as a dragonfly.

Italo Calvino

There is still one of which you never speak.' Marco Polo bowed his head. 'Venice,' the Khan said. Marco smiled. 'What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?' The emperor did not turn a hair. 'And yet I have never heard you mention that name.' And Polo said: 'Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.

Italo Calvino

I speak and speak, … but the listener retains only the words he is expecting. … It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.

Marco Polo to Kublai Khan

Italo Calvino

"Why do you speak to me of the stones? It is only the arch that matters to me."
Polo answers: "Without stones there is no arch."

Italo Calvino

Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo said. "Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it, or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little.

Italo Calvino