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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

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Umberto Eco
Age: 84 †
Born: 1932
Born: January 5
Died: 2016
Died: February 19
Essayist
Historian
Literary Critic
Literary Scholar
Medievalist
Novelist
Pedagogue
Philosopher
Screenwriter
Semiotician
Translator
Lissändria
Umberto Ecco
Umberto Eccounstino
Humberto Eco
Dedalus
Umberto Eko
Oumperto Eko
Eco Umberto
U. Eco
Though
Interpret
Truth
Existential
Come
Witty
Semiotics
Whole
Attempt
Pendulums
Made
Mad
Enigma
Believe
Humorous
Existentialism
Life
Terrible
Harmless
World
Powerful
Underlying

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I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.
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The step between ecstatic vision and sinful frenzy is all too brief.
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That day, I began to be incredulous. Or, rather, I regretted having been credulous. I regretted having allowed myself to be borne away by a passion of the mind. Such is credulity.
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The truth is an anagram of an anagram.
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In the United States, politics is a profession, whereas in Europe it is a right and a duty .
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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.
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There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list.
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Well, Diotallevi and I are planning a reform in higher education. A School of Comparative Irrelevance, where useless or impossibe courses are given. The school's aim is to turn out scholars capable of endlessly increasing the number of unnecessary subjects.
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Every time that I write a novel I am convinced for at least two years that it is the last one, because a novel is like a child. It takes two years after its birth. You have to take care of it. It starts walking, and then speaking.
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You can be obsessed by remorse all your life, not because you chose the wrong thing- you can always repent, atone : but because you never had the chance to prove to yourself that you would have chosen the right thing.
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There are more people than you think who want to have a challenging experience, in which they are obliged to reflect about the past.
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We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.
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History is a blood-drenched enigma and the world an error.
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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.
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We know that sensory phenomena are transcribed in the photographic emulsion in such a way that even if there is a causal link with the real phenomena, the graphic images can be considered as wholly arbitrary with respect to these phenomena.
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Libraries can take the place of God.
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Being a professional philosopher is, I would say, feeling natural to think about small and great problems. It is the only pleasure.
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There are four types: the cretin, the imbecile, the stupid and the mad. Normality is a balanced mixture of all four.
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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.
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