Every Choice Has Its Obverse, That Is

...and Every Wednesday The Perfumed Young Lady Slips Me A Hundred-crown Note To Leave Her Alone With The Convict. And By Thursday The Hundred Crowns Are Already Gone In So Much Beer. And When The Visiting Hour Is Over, The Young Lady Comes Out With The Stink Of Jail In Her Elegant Clothes; And The Prisoner Goes Back To His Cell With The Lady's Perfume In His Jailbird's Suit. And I'm Left With The Smell Of Beer. Life Is Nothing But Trading Smells.

Each New Clarice, Compact As A Living Body With Its Smells And Its Breath, Shows Off, Like A Gem, What Remains Of The Ancient Clarices, Fragmentary And Dead.

At Times The Mirror Increases A Thing’s Value, At Times Denies It.

A Classic Is A Book Which With Each Rereading Offers As Much Of A Sense Of Discovery As The First Reading.

You Are About To Begin Reading Italo Calvino's New Novel, If On A Winter's Night A Traveler.