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When one starts writing a book, especially a novel, even the humblest person in the world hopes to become Homer.
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
Novel
Become
Persons
Person
Humblest
Book
Homer
Writing
Hopes
Even
Starts
World
Especially
More quotes by Umberto Eco
The mobile phone... is a tool for those whose professions require a fast response, such as doctors or plumbers.
Umberto Eco
Well, Diotallevi and I are planning a reform in higher education. A School of Comparative Irrelevance, where useless or impossibe courses are given. The school's aim is to turn out scholars capable of endlessly increasing the number of unnecessary subjects.
Umberto Eco
It is sometimes hard to grasp the difference between identifying with one's own roots, understanding people with other roots, and judging what is good or bad.
Umberto Eco
Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.
Umberto Eco
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.
Umberto Eco
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
But Italy is not an intellectual country. On the subway in Tokyo everybody reads. In Italy, they don't. Don't evaluate Italy from the fact that it produced Raphael and Michelangelo.
Umberto Eco
You cannot believe what you are saying. Well, no. Hardly ever. But the philosopher is like the poet. The latter composes ideal letters for an ideal nymph, only to plumb with his words the depths of passion. The philosopher tests the coldness of his gaze, to see how far he can undermine the fortress of bigotry.
Umberto Eco
The United States needed a civil war to unite properly.
Umberto Eco
A great problem of the internet is how to filter information, how to discard what is not relevant or what is silly and to keep only the important information.
Umberto Eco
Better reality than a dream: if something is real, then it's real and you're not to blame.
Umberto Eco
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.
Umberto Eco
I seem to know all the cliches, but not how to put them together in a believable way. Or else these stories are terrible and grandiose precisely because all the cliches intertwine in an unrealistic way and you can't disentangle them. But when you actually live a cliche, it feels brand new, and you are unashamed.
Umberto Eco
Not that the incredulous person doesn't believe in anything. It's just that he doesn't believe in everything.
Umberto Eco
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.
Umberto Eco
We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay.
Umberto Eco
The more things you know, or pretend to know, the more powerful you are. It doesn't matter if the things are true. What counts, remember, is to possess a secret.
Umberto Eco
One of the problems I have always discussed is the refusal to distinguish between comment and fact. The newspaper wraps every fact into a comment. It is impossible to give mere fact without establishing point of view.
Umberto Eco
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.
Umberto Eco
I have lost the freedom of not having an opinion.
Umberto Eco
