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The thought that all experience will be lost at the moment of my death makes me feel pain and fear... What a waste, decades spent building up experience, only to throw it all away... We remedy this sadness by working. For example, by writing, painting, or building cities.

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
Makes
Working
Sadness
Moments
Moment
Throw
Thought
Pain
Spent
Feel
Fear
Waste
Feels
Experience
Painting
Writing
Lost
Building
Death
Cities
Remedy
Away
Example
Decades

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A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work otherwise he would have not written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations.
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We like lists because we don't want to die.
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I think of myself as a serious professor who, during the weekend, writes novels.
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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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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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History is a blood-drenched enigma and the world an error.
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I write stories about conspiracies and paranoid characters while I am, in fact, a very skeptical person.
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The good of a book lies in its being read.
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I was the type who looked at discussions of What Is Truth only with a view toward correcting the manuscript. If you were to quote I am that I am, for example, I thought that the fundamental problem was where to put the comma, inside the quotation marks or outside.
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We were clever enough to turn a laundry list into poetry.
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At most, recognizing that our history was inspired by many tales we now recognize as false should make us alert, ready to call to constantly into question the very tale we believe true, because the criterion of the wisdom of the community is based on constant awareness of the fallibility of our learning.
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Simple mechanisms do not love.
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Writing doesn't mean necessarily putting words on a sheet of paper. You can write a chapter while walking or eating.
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When the poet is in love, he is incapable of writing poetry on love. He has to write when he remembers that he was in love.
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We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.
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A newspaper can follow the compulsions, the desires of the readers. Take the English evening newspapers - they are following the readers' desires when they are interested only in the royal family gossip. But even the most objective, serious newspaper in the world designs the way in which the reader could or should think. That's unavoidable.
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I believe all sin, love, glory are this: when you slide down the knotted sheets, escaping from Gestapo headquarters, and she hugs you, there, suspended, and she whispers that she's always dreamed of you. The rest is just sex, copulation, the perpetuation of the vile species.
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They say that a cat, if it falls from a window and hits its nose, can lose its sense of smell and then, because cats live by their ability to smell, it can no longer recognize things. I'm a cat that hit its nose.
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I like nicotine because it excites my brain and helps me work.
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The most interesting letters I received about 'The Name of the Rose' were from people in the Midwest that maybe didn't understand exactly, but wanted to understand more and who were excited by this picture of a world which was not their own.
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