Italo Calvino Quotes

I don't know where I would place myself in the literary landscape. I really just write the book that I would want to read. And I put on the blinders, and I really - it is, for me, that simple.

I write poetry anyway and have for years and years. For me, putting fiction and poetry together is like the best of both worlds.

Write a book you'd like to read. If you wouldn't read it, why would anybody else? Don't write for a perceived audience or market. It may well have vanished by the time your book's ready.

I was always writing the books that I wanted to write, books that demanded to be written at the time. But, like most writers, you start off feeling your way.

As a writer, you have to first of all write what you want to. Listen to advice, by all means, but don't get bogged down in it.

You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.

I don't even know how to define myself. I'm a person who writes. It's something I enjoy, and hopefully people enjoy it as well.

There's actually nothing interesting about me except what I write.

I'm a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

I just write books, and I do it without any notion of what I should do or shouldn't do.

I never thought of myself as a writer.

Mr. Olsen in the fifth grade made me want to be a writer. He said, 'Chuck, you do this really well. And this is much better than setting fires, so keep it up.' That made me a writer.

I may well do some more polemical writing, if a subject that fires me up comes along. Apart from that possibility, I would like to continue to tell stories so long as I have stories to tell.

I knew what book we had to write, it was clear in my head; it was journals and poetry. So I passed on their offer. I told my agent this is our vision, and no one's done it this way.

I like writing my own material - I'm pretty good at it.

As a writer, I've always been interested in others.

I've been at writing long enough now to know that every three or four books, I have to start a new direction.

I don't know how I do it, but I've written about everything. I've written about my shoes.

I don't really think about genre. I like to write books that I'd love to read myself.

I am sure of this: that no one can write a book which children will like unless he write it for himself first.

What provides you with subject matter is your own language - and that's all.

I write my books never thinking of an actor.

I like to write and that's why I write. I don't think about how much the book will sell.

I've always wanted to be a writer, and I've kept journals since I was eight years old.

I wish I could think of a suitable name for the kind of writing I do.