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I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.

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
Good
Later
Thankfully
Think
Gave
Masturbation
Thinking
Early
Sixteen
Life
Poet
Publish
Like
Poetry
Fifteen
Age
Burn
Rather
Poets
Certain
Quickly

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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 light in her eyes was beyond description, yet it did not instill improper thoughts: it inspired a love tempered by awe, purifying the hearts it inflamed.
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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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I am an old consumer of papers. I cannot avoid reading my newspapers every morning.
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Is it worth it to be born if you cannot remember it later? And, technically speaking, had I ever been born? Other people, of course, said that I was. As far as I know, I was born in late April, at sixty years of age, in a hospital room.
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Every European goes on the streets and sees medieval churches. Not if you live in Indianapolis. The most exciting letters I received were from people in places like that.
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To survive, you must tell stories.
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The truth is an anagram of an anagram.
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If you want to become a man of letters and perhaps write some Histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise your History would become monotonous. But you must act with restraint. The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things.
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The French, the Italians, the Germans, the Spanish and the English have spent centuries killing each other.
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