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Deciding what is being talked about is a kind of interpretive bet.
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
Talked
Kind
Interpretive
Deciding
More quotes by Umberto Eco
In the United States there's a Puritan ethic and a mythology of success. He who is successful is good. In Latin countries, in Catholic countries, a successful person is a sinner.
Umberto Eco
Entering a novel is like going on a climb in the mountains: You have to learn the rhythms of respiration - acquire the pace. Otherwise you stop right away.
Umberto Eco
But why doesn't the Gospel ever say that Christ laughed? I asked, for no good reason. Is Jorge right? Legions of scholars have wondered whether Christ laughed. The question doesn't interest me much. I believe he never laughed, because, omniscient as the son of God had to be, he knew how we Christians would behave. . . .
Umberto Eco
It is clear that when you write a story that takes place in the past, you try to show what really happened in those times. But you are always moved by the suspicion that you are also showing something about our contemporary world.
Umberto Eco
What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?
Umberto Eco
The truth is a young maiden as modest as she is beautiful, and therefore she is always seen cloaked.
Umberto Eco
He who falls in love in bars doesn't need a woman all his own. He can always find one on loan.
Umberto Eco
If somebody writes a book and doesn't care for the survival of that book, he's an imbecile.
Umberto Eco
The print does not always have the same shape as the body that impressed it, and it doesn't always derive from the pressure of a body. At times it reproduces the impression a body has left in our mind: it is the print of an idea.
Umberto Eco
Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.
Umberto Eco
The French, the Italians, the Germans, the Spanish and the English have spent centuries killing each other.
Umberto Eco
I am an old consumer of papers. I cannot avoid reading my newspapers every morning.
Umberto Eco
There are more people than you think who want to have a challenging experience, in which they are obliged to reflect about the past.
Umberto Eco
If you want to become a man of letters and perhaps write some Histories one day, you must also lie and invent tales, otherwise your History would become monotonous. But you must act with restraint. The world condemns liars who do nothing but lie, even about the most trivial things, and it rewards poets, who lie only about the greatest things.
Umberto Eco
Sometimes my characters are not myself.
Umberto Eco
Only an unhinged movie survives as a disconnected series of images, of peaks, of visual icebergs. It should display not one central idea but many. It should not reveal a coherent philosophy of composition. It must live on, and because of, its glorious ricketiness.
Umberto Eco
Sometimes you say things with a smile with the precise intention of making it clear that you are not being serious, and are only kidding. If I salute a friend with a smile and say, How are you, you old scoundrel! clearly I don't really mean he's a scoundrel.
Umberto Eco
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
[In my writing] I know that I have made a caricature out of [others' academic] theories [but] I think that caricatures are frequently good portraits.
Umberto Eco
The Art of the Romance, though warning us that it is providing fictions, opens a door into the Palace of Absurdity, and when we have lightly stepped inside, slams it shut behind us.
Umberto Eco
