Umberto Eco quotes - page 2

The author should die once he has finished writing. So as not to trouble the path of the text. (Umberto Eco)
The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars. View quote
Umberto Eco
I believe that you can reach the point where there is no longer any difference between developing the habit of pretending to believe and developing the habit of believing. View quote
Umberto Eco
This, in fact, is the power of the imagination, which, combining the memory of gold with that of the mountain, can compose the idea of a golden mountain. View quote
Umberto Eco
Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all. View quote
Umberto Eco
The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and, in moving, he always returns whence he came. View quote
Umberto Eco
There are magic moments, involving great physical fatigue and intense motor excitement, that produce visions of people known in the past. As I learned later from the delightful little book of the Abbé de Bucquoy, there are also visions of books as yet unwritten. View quote
Umberto Eco
I started to write [The Name of the Rose] in March of 1978, moved by a seminal idea. I wanted to poison a monk. View quote
Umberto Eco
To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative - the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time. View quote
Umberto Eco
The hand of God creates; it does not conceal. View quote
Umberto Eco
A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection - not an invitation for hypnosis. (Umberto Eco)
After all, the cultivated person's first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopaedia. View quote
Umberto Eco
Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: you have to learn the rhythm of respiration, acquire the pace; otherwise you stop right away. View quote
Umberto Eco
Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do. View quote
Umberto Eco
Any fact becomes important when it's connected to another. View quote
Umberto Eco
In the United States, politics is a profession, whereas in Europe it is a right and a duty. View quote
Umberto Eco
All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful. View quote
Umberto Eco
I don't know, maybe we're always looking for the right place, maybe it's within reach, but we don't recognize it. Maybe to recognize it, we have to believe in it. View quote
Umberto Eco
In short, to remember is to reconstruct in part on the basis of what we have learned or said since. That's normal, that's how we remember. I tell you this to encourage you to reactivate some of these profiles of excitation, instead of simply digging obsessively in an effort to find something that's already there, as shiny and new as you imagine it was when you first set it aside ... Remembering is a labor, not a luxury. View quote
Umberto Eco
The emperor of the Latins - who hasn't been a Latin himself since the days of Charlemagne - is the successor of the Roman emperors - the ones of Rome, I mean, not those of Constantinople. But to make sure he's emperor, he has to be crowned by the pope, because the law of Christ has swept away the false law, the law of liars. To be crowned by the pope, the emperor also has to be recognized by the cities of Italy, and each of them kind of goes his own way, so he has to be crowned king of Italy - provided, naturally, that the Teutonic princes have elected him. Is that clear? View quote
Umberto Eco
I developed a passion for the Middle Ages the same way some people develop a passion for coconuts. (Umberto Eco)
To play the trumpet, you must train your lips for a long time. When I was twelve or thirteen I was a good player, but I lost the skill and now I play very badly. I do it every day even so. The reason is that I want to return to my childhood. For me, the trumpet is evidence of the sort of young man I was. View quote
Umberto Eco
Musical compositions can be very sad - Chopin - but you have the pleasure of this sadness. The cheap consolation is: you will be happy. The higher consolation is the pleasure and recognition of your unhappiness, the pleasure of having recognised that fate, destiny and life are such as they are and so you reach a higher form of consciousness. View quote
Umberto Eco
I think of myself as a serious professor who, during the weekend, writes novels. View quote
Umberto Eco
Certainly, light fiction exists and encompasses mysteries or second-class romance novels, books that are read on the beach, whose only aim is to entertain. These books are not concerned with style or creativity - instead they are successful because they are repetitive and follow a template that readers enjoy. View quote
Umberto Eco