Gianfranco Calligarich

“Readers are a dying species,” I said. “Like whales, partridges, wild animals in general. Borges calls them black swans, and maintains that good readers are now scarcer than good writers. He says reading is an activity subsequent to writing, more resigned, more civil, more intellectual. No,” I went on, “that’s not where the danger lies. Books make different impressions according to the state of mind you read them in. A book that struck you as banal on a first reading may dazzle you on a second simply because in the meantime you suffered some kind of heartbreak, or you took a journey, or you fell in love. In other words, something happened to you.”
― Gianfranco Calligarich, Last Summer in the City

“But it's always like that, we are what we are not because of the people we've met but because of those we've left.”
― Gianfranco Calligarich, Last Summer in the City