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He who laughs does not believe in what he laughs at, but neither does he hate it. Therefore, laughing at evil means not preparing oneself to combat it, and laughing at good means denying the power through which good is self-propagating.

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
Self
Neither
Mean
Therefore
Believe
Laughing
Propagating
Good
Evil
Denying
Hate
Laughs
Means
Preparing
Power
Combat
Doe
Oneself

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I feel that I am a scholar who only with the left hand writes novels.
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What we honor as prudence in our elders is simply panic in action.
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They [the Templars] had read Avicenna, and they were not ignorant, like the Europeans. How could you live alongside a tolerant, mystical, libertine culture for two centuries without succumbing to its allure, particularly when you compared it to Western culture, which was crude, vulgar, barbaric, and Germanic?
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Nothing can shake my belief that this world is the fruit of a dark god whose shadow I extend.
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To read a paper book is another experience: you can do it on a ship, on the branch of a tree, on your bed, even if there is a blackout.
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I have always been fascinated by paranoid people imagining conspiracies. I am fascinated by this in a critical way.
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From lies to forgeries the step is not so long, and I have written technical essays on the logic of forgeries and on the influence of forgeries on history.
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Is it possible to say It was a beautiful morning at the end of November without feeling like Snoopy?
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But laughter is weakness, corruption, the foolishness of our flesh.
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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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If Bush had read all the documents about the Russians and British in Afghanistan in the 19th century, he would have not done what he did in the 21st. He would have understood how difficult it was to control this territory. He probably didn't read them.
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The monkish vows keep us far from that sink of vice that is the female body, but often they bring us close to other errors. Can I finally hide from myself the fact that even today my old age is still stirred by the noonday demon when my eyes, in choir, happen to linger on the beardless face of a novice, pure and fresh as a maidens?
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Does the novel have to deepen the psychology of its heroes? Certainly the modern novel does, but the ancient legends did not do the same. Oedipus' psychology was deduced by Aeschylus or Freud, but the character is simply there, fixed in a pure and terribly disquieting state.
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I don't see the point of having 80 million people online if all they are doing in the end is talking to ghosts in the suburbs.
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All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear, another tweaks my nose, and each says to me, 'Sir, write me, I am beautiful.
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When you are on the dancefloor, there is nothing to do but dance.
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Creativity can only be anarchic, capitalist, Darwinian.
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Not that the incredulous person doesn't believe in anything. It's just that he doesn't believe in everything.
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I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to tell a story.
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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.
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