How Well I Would Write If I

Though I Leave The House As Little As Possible, I Have The Impression That Someone Is Disturbing My Papers. More Than Once I Have Discovered That Some Pages Were Missing From My Manuscripts. A Few Days Afterward I Would Find The Pages In Their Place Again. But Often I No Longer Recognize My Manuscripts, As If I Had Forgotten What I Had Written, Or As If Overnight I Were So Changed That No Longer Recognized Myself In The Self Of Yesterday.

You Are About To Begin Reading Italo Calvino's New Novel, If On A Winter's Night A Traveler.

...life Is Nothing But Trading Smells.

To Write Well About The Elegant World You Have To Know It And Experience It To The Depths Of Your Being... What Matters Is Not Whether You Love It Or Hate It, But Only To Be Quite Clear About Your Position Regarding It.

Arriving At Each New City, The Traveler Finds Again A Past Of His That He Did Not Know He Had: The Foreignness Of What You No Longer Are Or No Longer Possess Lies In Wait For You In Foreign, Unpossessed Places.