Quote

Every time that I write a novel I am convinced for at least two years that it is the last one, because a novel is like a child. It takes two years after its birth. You have to take care of it. It starts walking, and then speaking.

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
Like
Two
Walking
Care
Novel
Take
Takes
Children
Least
Writing
Child
Starts
Every
Lasts
Speaking
Years
Last
Convinced
Time
Write
Birth

More quotes by Umberto Eco

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Political satire is a serious thing. In democratic newspapers throughout the world there are daily cartoons that often are not even funny, as is the case especially in many English-language newspapers. Instead, they contain a political message, and the artist takes full responsibility.
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The pleasures of love are pains that become desirable, where sweetness and torment blend, and so love is voluntary insanity, infernal paradise, and celestial hell - in short, harmony of opposite yearnings, sorrowful laughter, soft diamond.
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I love the secrecy of writing fiction. When I write a novel, I don't tell anybody what I'm doing. I'm living in my private world. And it's a great sensation.
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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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I enjoyed your article, but I preferred my own.
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Your masters at Oxford have taught you to idolize reason, drying up the prophetic capacities of your heart!
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I seal that which was not to be said in the tomb that I become.
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To imagine secret societies and conspiracy is a way not to react to the social and political life. Because you say, We don't know who they are. We cannot react without reasoning. So it is a way to keep people far from the political environment.
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The mobile phone... is a tool for those whose professions require a fast response, such as doctors or plumbers.
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It is obvious that the newspaper produces the opinion of the readers.
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Socrates ... did not write. It seems academically obvious that he perished because he did not publish!
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Naturally, everything depends on one's background books and on what one is looking for.
Umberto Eco
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I have lost the freedom of not having an opinion.
Umberto Eco
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We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We like lists because we don't want to die.
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I'm always fascinated by losers. Also, in my Foucault's Pendulum, the main characters, who are in a way losers, they are more interesting than the winners.
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The author may not interpret. But he must tell why and how he wrote his book.
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If photography is to be likened to perception, this is not because the former is a natural process but because the latter is also coded.
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The function of memory is not only to preserve, but also to throw away. If you remembered everything from your entire life, you would be sick.
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There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.
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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