ana e.

“It did not have the makings of a cozy situation for anyone but Mordred, who seems to relish being hated for the love of being hated.”
― Phyllis Ann Karr, The Idylls of the Queen: A Tale of Queen Guenevere

“There is no language without deceit.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

“There is still one of which you never speak.'

Marco Polo bowed his head.

'Venice,' the Khan said.

Marco smiled. 'What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?'

The emperor did not turn a hair. 'And yet I have never heard you mention that name.'

And Polo said: 'Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities

“I speak and speak,” Marco says, “but the listener retains only the words he is expecting. The description of the world to which you lend a benevolent ear is one thing; the description that will go the rounds of the groups of stevedores and gondoliers on the street outside my house the day of my return is another; and yet another, that which I might dictate late in life, if I were taken prisoner by Genoese pirates and put in irons in the same cell with a writer of adventure stories. It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.”
― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities