Quote

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

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
Year
Traps
Fall
Urgent
Write
Invent
Two
Starting
Need
Activity
Needs
Novel
Writing
Break
Years
Maybe
Trap

More quotes by Umberto Eco

Image
Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequenter: grasp the words, and the subject will follow.
Umberto Eco
Image
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.
Umberto Eco
Image
There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics.
Umberto Eco
Image
It is sometimes hard to grasp the difference between identifying with one's own roots, understanding people with other roots, and judging what is good or bad.
Umberto Eco
Image
Where else? I belong to a lost generation and am comfortable only in the company of others who are lost and lonely.
Umberto Eco
Image
The comic is the perception of the opposite humor is the feeling of it.
Umberto Eco
Image
I have lost the freedom of not having an opinion.
Umberto Eco
Image
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.
Umberto Eco
Image
We live for books.
Umberto Eco
Image
Every great thinker is someone else's moron.
Umberto Eco
Image
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
Image
Does the novel have to deepen the psychology of its heroes? Certainly the modern novel does, but the ancient legends did not do the same. Oedipus' psychology was deduced by Aeschylus or Freud, but the character is simply there, fixed in a pure and terribly disquieting state.
Umberto Eco
Image
Only an unhinged movie survives as a disconnected series of images, of peaks, of visual icebergs. It should display not one central idea but many. It should not reveal a coherent philosophy of composition. It must live on, and because of, its glorious ricketiness.
Umberto Eco
Image
Then we are living in a place abandoned by God, I said, disheartened. Have you found any places where God would have felt at home? William asked me, looking down from his great height.
Umberto Eco
Image
Nothing is more fleeting than external form, which withers and alters like the flowers of the field at the appearance of autumn.
Umberto Eco
Image
What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?
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
My collection of rare books concerns only books that don't tell the truth.
Umberto Eco
Image
There are four types: the cretin, the imbecile, the stupid and the mad. Normality is a balanced mixture of all four.
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