And you say, “Just a moment, I’ve almost finished If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino.”

I speak and speak, but the listener retains only the words he is expecting. . . . It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.

The unconscious is the ocean of the unsayable, of what has been expelled from the land of language, removed as a result of ancient prohibitions.

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