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

More quotes by Umberto Eco

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A secret is powerful when it is empty. People often mention the Masonic secret. What on earth is the Masonic secret? No one can tell. As long as it remains empty it can be filled up with every possible notion, and it has power.
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Thus we have on stage two men, each of whom knows nothing of what he believes the other knows, and to deceive each other reciprocally both speak in allusions, each of the two hoping (in vain) that the other holds the key to his puzzle.
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Yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names.
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If western culture is shown to be rich it is because, even before the Enlightenment, it has tried to dissolve harmful simplifications through inquiry and the critical mind.
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A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection - not an invitation for hypnosis.
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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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I started to write [The Name of the Rose] in March of 1978, moved by a seminal idea. I wanted to poison a monk.
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We are always remaking history. Our memory is always an interpretive reconstruction of the past, so is perspective.
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Fools are in great demand, especially on social occasions. They embarrass everyone but provide material for conversation. In their positive form, they become diplomats.
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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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It is obvious that the newspaper produces the opinion of the readers.
Umberto Eco
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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 like lists because we don't want to die.
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There are more books in the world than hours in which to read them. We are thus deeply influenced by books we haven't read, that we haven't had the time to read.
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My father was an accountant and his father was a typographer.
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Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.
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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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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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I felt like poisoning a monk.
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Nothing is more fleeting than external form, which withers and alters like the flowers of the field at the appearance of autumn.
Umberto Eco