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There is only one thing that you write for yourself, and that is a shopping list.

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
Lists
Write
Writing
Thing
Shopping
List

More quotes by Umberto Eco

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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
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Perhaps I am not as wise as I like to think I am.
Umberto Eco
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I feel that I am a scholar who only with the left hand writes novels.
Umberto Eco
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Living the same sorrows three times was a suffering, but it was a suffering to relive even the same joys. The joy of life is born from feeling, whether it be joy or grief, always of short duration, and woe to those who know they will enjoy eternal bliss.
Umberto Eco
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The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produce no concepts therefore it is dumb.
Umberto Eco
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I think a book should be judged 10 years later, after reading and re-reading it.
Umberto Eco
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The Fundamental Principle that governs - or ought to govern -human affairs if we wish to avoid misunderstandings, conflicts, or pointless utopias, is negotiation.
Umberto Eco
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The photograph [of Che Guevara], for a civilization now accustomed to thinking in images, was not the description of a single event... it was an argument.
Umberto Eco
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Show not what has been done, but what can be. How beautiful the world would be if there were a procedure for moving through labyrinths.
Umberto Eco
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Today I realize that many recent exercises in deconstructive reading read as if inspired by my parody. This is parody's mission: it must never be afraid of going too far. If its aim is true, it simply heralds what others will later produce, unblushing, with impassive and assertive gravity.
Umberto Eco
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Conspiracies and all the theories of conspiracy are a part of the canon of fakes. And I'm involved, in all of my writings, the theoretical ones as well as the novels, with the production of fakes.
Umberto Eco
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The truth is a young maiden as modest as she is beautiful, and therefore she is always seen cloaked.
Umberto Eco
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How does a person feel when looking at the sky? He thinks that he doesn't have enough tongues to describe what he sees. Nevertheless, people have never stopping describing the sky, simply listing what they see.
Umberto Eco
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Every great thinker is someone else's moron.
Umberto Eco
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I have always been fascinated by paranoid people imagining conspiracies. I am fascinated by this in a critical way.
Umberto Eco
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I love the smell of book ink in the morning.
Umberto Eco
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The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon that is better than a spoon... The book has been thoroughly tested, and it's very hard to see how it could be improved on for its current purposes.
Umberto Eco
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For the enemy to be recognized and feared, he has to be in your home or on your doorstep.
Umberto Eco
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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.
Umberto Eco
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Conspiracies do exist. Probably in this moment in New York there is an economic group making a conspiracy in order to buy three banks. But if they succeed, they are immediately discovered.
Umberto Eco