“Every time I must find something to do that will look like something a little beyond my capabilities.”

The stream was a net of limpid, delicate ripples, with the water running through the mesh. From time to time, like a fluttering of silver wings, the dorsum of a trout flashed on the surface, the fish at once plunging zigzag down into the water.

“how to read: a spell; a lullaby or nursery rhyme; a myth (primitive, classical); a fable; a Buddhist legend; a chanson de geste …”

“We write to make it possible for the unwritten world to express itself through us.”

In his never-before-translated review of ‘The Dry Heart,’ Italo Calvino lauds Natalia Ginzburg, whom he likens to Chekhov and Maupassant.

To Eugenio Scalfari—Rome March 7, 1942 […] I accepted the praise you gave me at the start of your letter with barely restrained grunts of satisfaction. Although I am small, ugly and dirty, I am highly ambitious and at the slightest flattery I …