“Why d’you make me suffer?"“Because I love you.”Now it was his turn to get angry. “No, no, you don’t love me! People in love want happiness, not pain!”“People in love want only love, even at the cost of pain.”“Then you’re making people suffer on purpose.”“Yes, to see if you love me.”The Baron’s philosophy would not go any further. “Pain is a negative state of the soul.” “Love is all.” “Pain should always be fought against.”“Love refuses nothing.”“Some things I’ll never admit.”“Oh yes, you do, now, for you love me and you suffer.”

Italian novelist and short story writer

Italo Calvino was an Italian novelist and short story writer. He is best known for the Our Ancestors trilogy, published between 1952 and 1959, and for later works such as Cosmicomics, Invisible Cities, and If on a winter's night a traveler. His fiction includes the three novels in Our Ancestors, the short story collection Cosmicomics, and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler. These works show the range of his imagination across fiction in different forms, from linked narratives to brief stories and more experimental novels.