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The author may not interpret. But he must tell why and how he wrote his book.

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
Wrote
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Book
Must
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More quotes by Umberto Eco

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Love is wiser than wisdom.
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We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.
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The cultivated person's first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopedia.
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There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics.
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To read a paper book is another experience: you can do it on a ship, on the branch of a tree, on your bed, even if there is a blackout.
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If Bush had read all the documents about the Russians and British in Afghanistan in the 19th century, he would have not done what he did in the 21st. He would have understood how difficult it was to control this territory. He probably didn't read them.
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What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?
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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.
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The truth is an anagram of an anagram.
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If culture did not filter, it would be inane - as inane as the formless, boundless Internet is on its own. And if we all possessed the boundless knowledge of the Web, we would be idiots! Culture is an instrument for making a hierarchical system of intellectual labor.
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The comic is the perception of the opposite humor is the feeling of it.
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And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts?
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Narrativity presumes a special taste for plot. And this taste for plot was always very present in the Anglo-Saxon countries and that explains their high quality of detective novels.
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What is love? There is nothing in the world, neither man nor Devil nor any thing, that I hold as suspect as love, for it penetrates the soul more than any other thing. Nothing exists that so fills and binds the heart as love does. Therefore, unless you have those weapons that subdue it, the soul plunges through love into an immense abyss.
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... luckily, Eden is soon populated. The ethical dimension begins when the other appears on the scene.
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Political satire is a serious thing. In democratic newspapers throughout the world there are daily cartoons that often are not even funny, as is the case especially in many English-language newspapers. Instead, they contain a political message, and the artist takes full responsibility.
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But why doesn't the Gospel ever say that Christ laughed? I asked, for no good reason. Is Jorge right? Legions of scholars have wondered whether Christ laughed. The question doesn't interest me much. I believe he never laughed, because, omniscient as the son of God had to be, he knew how we Christians would behave. . . .
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There are no stories without meaning. And I am one of those men who can find it even when others fail to see it. Afterwards the story becomes the book of the living, like a blaring trumpet that raises from the tomb those who have been dust for centuries.
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The pleasures of love are pains that become desirable, where sweetness and torment blend, and so love is voluntary insanity, infernal paradise, and celestial hell - in short, harmony of opposite yearnings, sorrowful laughter, soft diamond.
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Each of us is sometimes a cretin, a fool, a moron, or a lunatic. A normal person is just a reasonable mix of these components, these four ideal types.
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