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Umberto Eco


Italian
January 5, 1932
Novelist
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I write what I write.


Umberto Eco
Tags: Write I Write
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Human beings are religious animals.


Umberto Eco
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Libraries can take the place of God.


Umberto Eco
Tags: God Take Place
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I have lost the freedom of not having an opinion.


Umberto Eco
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Today, political events are nullified unless they're on TV.


Umberto Eco
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I like nicotine because it excites my brain and helps me work.


Umberto Eco
Tags: Work Me Like
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The United States needed a civil war to unite properly.


Umberto Eco
Tags: War States United
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I think of myself as a serious professor who, during the weekend, writes novels.


Umberto Eco
Tags: Think Who I Think
Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.
Umberto Eco
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Every European goes on the streets and sees medieval churches. Not if you live in Indianapolis.


Umberto Eco
Tags: You Every Live
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If somebody writes a book and doesn't care for the survival of that book, he's an imbecile.


Umberto Eco
Tags: He Care Book
The mobile phone... is a tool for those whose professions require a fast response, such as doctors or plumbers.
Umberto Eco
Tags: Those Fast Whose
There is no great sport in having bullets flying about one in every direction, but I find they have less horror when among them than when in anticipation.
Umberto Eco
Tags: Great About Them
When I went from being an academic to being a member of the community of writers some of my former colleagues did look on me with a certain resentment.
Umberto Eco
Tags: Me Being Some
But Italy is not an intellectual country. On the subway in Tokyo everybody reads. In Italy, they don't. Don't evaluate Italy from the fact that it produced Raphael and Michelangelo.
Umberto Eco
As a scholar I am interested in the philosophy of language, semiotics, call it what you want, and one of the main features of the human language is the possibility of lying.
Umberto Eco
Tags: You Want Am
Media populism means appealing to people directly through media. A politician who can master the media can shape political affairs outside of parliament and even eliminate the mediation of parliament.
Umberto Eco
Tags: People Who Even
Conspiracies do exist. Probably in this moment in New York there is an economic group making a conspiracy in order to buy three banks. But if they succeed, they are immediately discovered.
Umberto Eco
Tags: New Making Three
I love the secrecy of writing fiction. When I write a novel, I don't tell anybody what I'm doing. I'm living in my private world. And it's a great sensation.
Umberto Eco
Tags: Great Love World
Semiotics is a general theory of all existing languages... all forms of communication - visual, tactile, and so on... There is general semiotics, which is a philosophical approach to this field, and then there are many specific semiotics.
Umberto Eco
All the religious wars that have caused blood to be shed for centuries arise from passionate feelings and facile counter-positions, such as Us and Them, good and bad, white and black.
Umberto Eco
Tags: Good Them Us
But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
Umberto Eco
Tags: Truth Had Our
How does a person feel when looking at the sky? He thinks that he doesn't have enough tongues to describe what he sees. Nevertheless, people have never stopping describing the sky, simply listing what they see.
Umberto Eco
Tags: People Never How
We invented the car, and it made it easier for us to crash and die. If I gave a car to my grandfather, he would die in five minutes, while I have grown up slowly to accept speed.
Umberto Eco
Tags: Car Up Would
After years of practice, I can walk into a bookstore and understand its layout in a few seconds. I can glance at the spine of a book and make a good guess at its content from a number of signs.
Umberto Eco
Tags: Good Make Years
I started to work in television for three or four years, in 1954. There was one channel of television, black and white. But it could be entertaining and educational. During the evening they showed important plays, opera or Shakespeare's tragedies.
Umberto Eco
Tags: Work Years Could
We are never racist against somebody who is very far away. I don't know any racism against the Eskimos. To have a racist feeling, there must be an other who is slightly different from us - but is living close to us.
Umberto Eco
Tags: Who Know Very
I don't want to write a novel per year. I know that I need a break of one or two years. So maybe I invent some new, urgent activity so I don't fall into the trap of starting a new novel.
Umberto Eco
Tags: Know Want Some
The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.
Umberto Eco
Tags: Good Up Them
Dan Brown is a character from 'Foucault's Pendulum!' I invented him. He shares my characters' fascinations - the world conspiracy of Rosicrucians, Masons, and Jesuits. The role of the Knights Templar. The hermetic secret. The principle that everything is connected. I suspect Dan Brown might not even exist.
Umberto Eco
Tags: World He Even
The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon that is better than a spoon... The book has been thoroughly tested, and it's very hard to see how it could be improved on for its current purposes.
Umberto Eco
Tags: You Like Very
My maternal grandmother - she was a compulsive reader. She had only been through five grades of elementary school, but she was a member of the municipal library, and she brought home two or three books a week for me. They could be dime novels or Balzac.
Umberto Eco
Tags: Home Me Had
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.
Umberto Eco
Tags: Sad You Life
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.
Umberto Eco
Tags: Time Good You