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It is clear that when you write a story that takes place in the past, you try to show what really happened in those times. But you are always moved by the suspicion that you are also showing something about our contemporary world.

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
Trying
Times
Showing
Something
Write
Contemporary
Really
Shows
Moved
Always
Place
Takes
World
Stories
Happened
Past
Clear
Also
Story
Writing
Show
Suspicion

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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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We are a pluralist civilisation because we allow mosques to be built in our countries, and we are not going to stop simply because Christian missionaries are thrown into prison in Kabul. If we did so, we too would become Taliban.
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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.
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I think of myself as a serious professor who, during the weekend, writes novels.
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Any fact becomes important when it's connected to another.
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I seem to know all the cliches, but not how to put them together in a believable way. Or else these stories are terrible and grandiose precisely because all the cliches intertwine in an unrealistic way and you can't disentangle them. But when you actually live a cliche, it feels brand new, and you are unashamed.
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Deciding what is being talked about is a kind of interpretive bet.
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Nothing can shake my belief that this world is the fruit of a dark god whose shadow I extend.
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Once you reach your fifties, you have to stop being interested in the present and write only on Elizabethan poets.
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The question of manuscript changes is very important for literary criticism, the psychology of creation and other aspects of the study of literature.
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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.
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When your true enemies are too strong, you have to choose weaker enemies.
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Even today, I frequently meet scientists who, outside their own narrow discipline, are superstitious.
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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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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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Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message.
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Not bad, not bad at all, Diotallevi said. To arrive at the truth through the painstaking reconstruction of a false text.
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If you want to use television to teach somebody, you must first teach them how to use television.
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Yes, I know, it's not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.
Umberto Eco