Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Understand
Seconds
Book
Content
Layout
Years
Guess
Bookstore
Make
Number
Bookstores
Good
Walk
Glance
Walks
Spine
Numbers
Glances
Practice
Signs

More quotes by Umberto Eco

Image
Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means.
Umberto Eco
Image
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.
Umberto Eco
Image
A book is a fragile creature. It suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands.
Umberto Eco
Image
Our most noted satirists are true columnists and their opinions can be worth more than any well-documented exposé.
Umberto Eco
Image
Mystical additions and subtractions always come out the way you want.
Umberto Eco
Image
We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.
Umberto Eco
Image
I feel that I am a scholar who only with the left hand writes novels.
Umberto Eco
Image
[I am fascinated by stupidity] because normal intelligence is boring. Two plus two makes four - finished. You have no possibilities! Stupidity is infinite. Two plus two can make billions of different numbers.
Umberto Eco
Image
My poetry had the same functional origin and the same formal configuration as teenage acne.
Umberto Eco
Image
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
Image
That is a real attitude - to see everything as being meaningful, even the less important things, to prove something, even the greater problems of life.
Umberto Eco
Image
Never affirm, always allude: allusions are made to test the spirit and probe the heart.
Umberto Eco
Image
The Art of the Romance, though warning us that it is providing fictions, opens a door into the Palace of Absurdity, and when we have lightly stepped inside, slams it shut behind us.
Umberto Eco
Image
After so many years even the fire of passion dies, and with it what was believed the light of the truth. Who of us is able to say now whether Hector or Achilles was right, Agamemnon or Priam, when they fought over the beauty of a woman who is now dust and ashes?
Umberto Eco
Image
Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from insane passion for the truth.
Umberto Eco
Image
In short, Roberto privately concluded, if you would avoid wars, never make treaties of peace.
Umberto Eco
Image
All the blogs, Facebook, Twitter are made by people who want to show their own private affairs at the price of making fakes, to try to appear such as they are not, to construct another personality, which is a veritable loss of identity.
Umberto Eco
Image
Writing doesn't mean necessarily putting words on a sheet of paper. You can write a chapter while walking or eating.
Umberto Eco
Image
I've always said that I learned the English I know through two sources -- Marvel Comics and Finnegans Wake.
Umberto Eco
Image
There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.
Umberto Eco