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Italo Calvino Quotes about Past

All Italo Calvino Quotes Giving House Language Literature Lying Memories Past quotes Pleasure Reading Travel Winter Writing
The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods,

The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.

Italo Calvino
Past, Hands, Cities
Italo Calvino (2013). “Invisible Cities”, p.19, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand

Italo Calvino
Past, Hands, Cities
Italo Calvino (2013). “Invisible Cities”, p.19, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

what he sought was always something lying ahead, and even if it was a matter of the past it was a past that changed gradually as he advanced on his journey, because the traveller's past changes according to the route he has followed: not the immediate past, that is, to which each day that goes by adds a day, but the more remote past. Arriving at each new city, the traveller 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.

Italo Calvino
Lying, Past, Journey

Futures not achieved are only branches of the past: dead branches.

Italo Calvino
Past, Branches

Memory really matters...only if it binds together the imprint of the past and the project of the future, if it enables us to act without forgetting what we wanted to do, to become without ceasing to be, and to be without ceasing to become.

Italo Calvino
Memories, Past, Together

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