How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"How well I would write if I were not here! If between the white page and the writing of words and stories that take shape and disappear without anyone's ever writing them there were not interposed that uncomfortable partition which is my person!" (15.8)
Silas Flannery, in an attempt to sit down and write, wishes that he weren't involved in his writing at all. Maybe if he were totally passive in his writing, he'd be happier about doing it. But instead, he feels that his possibilities are limited by the fact that he's an individual with free will. If only some sort of larger force could take over his writing, maybe then he could fulfill his fantasy of writing a book that is "true."
Quote #5
"Will I ever be able to say, 'Today it writes,' just like 'Today it rains,' 'Today it is windy'? Only when it will come natural to me to use the verb "write" in the impersonal form will I be able to hope that through me is expressed something less limited than the personality of an individual." (15.34)
In his desire to give up his sense of free will, Flannery thinks of how he might erase himself by changing the way he talks about writing. For example, maybe if he never uses the word "I," he can take himself out of his writing. After all, an earlier section of the book mentions that "I" is just a place holder we use when we talk about ourselves; it can refer to anyone, and maybe erasing the "I" can erase you from language. Think about it.
Quote #6
"Once—the biographers of the Prophet tell us—while dictating to the scribe Abdullah, Mohammed left a sentence half finished. The scribe, instinctively, suggested the conclusion. Absently, the Prophet accepted as the divine word what Abdullah had said. This scandalized the scribe, who abandoned the Prophet and lost his faith" (15.61).
Silas Flannery meditates on a story about the writing of the Qur'an, and ultimately decides that Abdullah was wrong to lose his faith. Flannery later adds: "[Abdullah] was the one who had to deal with the internal coherence of the written language, with grammar and syntax, to channel into it the fluidity of a thought that expands outside all language before it becomes word" (15.62). In other words, because Abdullah was responsible for putting into writing a divine thought that is beyond writing, the task of finding the best way to say it lay entirely with him. He didn't realize the point that Calvino makes throughout this novel: that all writing tries to express something that at the end of the day is inexpressible. There could never be a perfect way of taking down the Prophet's words, because there is no such thing as perfection in writing. Writing always tries to say exactly what a person (or even God) means, but it must always fall short. The important thing for Calvino is that the writer keep striving.