What makes lovemaking and reading resemble each other most is that within both of them times and spaces open, different from measurable time and space.

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We'll make an army in the trees and bring the earth and the people on it to their senses.

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You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler.

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I am a Saturn who dreams of being a Mercury, and everything I write reflects these two impulses.

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What harbor can receive you more securely than a great library?

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The ultimate meaning to which all stories refer has two faces: the continuity of life, the inevitability of death.

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Of course, the ideal position for reading is something you can never find.

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If the spark doesn't come, that's a pity; but we do not read the classics out of duty or respect, but only out of love.

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The novels that attract me most... are those that create an illusion of transperancy around a knot of human relationships as obscure, cruel and perverse as possible.

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Reading is solitude. One reads alone, even in another's presence.

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