The old postcards to not detect Maurilia as it was but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia

It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old postcards to not detect Maurilia as it was but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one.

I. Calvino, Invisible cities (1972), tr. W. Weaver (1974),  27 

This emphasis on virtue is the hardest thing to take for modern readers of Dickens

Of course the darkness in Dickens always contrasts with the light, even though nowadays it is the 'darker' aspects that stand out more in our reading of him. The light usually radiates from young girls who are all the more virtuous and kind-hearted the more steeped they are in a kind of black hell. This emphasis on virtue is the hardest thing to take for modern readers of Dickens.

I. Calvino, 'Charles Dickens: Our Mutual Friend' (1983), in ed. Why read the classics? (1991), tr. M. McLaughlin (1999), 147

The contemporary world may be banal and stultifying

The contemporary world may be banal and stultifying, but it is always the context in which we have to place ourselves to look either forwards or backwards. In order to read the classic, you have to establish where exactly you are reading them 'from', otherwise both the reader and the text tend to drift in a timeless haze.

I. Calvino, 'Why read the classics?' (1981), in ed. Why read the classics? (1991), tr. M. McLaughlin (1999), 8