Umberto Eco Quotes

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Umberto Eco

Profession : Novelist

Birth : January 5, 1932

We like lists because we don't want to die.

Umberto Eco

I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.

Umberto Eco

But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.

Umberto Eco

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.

Umberto Eco

I have lost the freedom of not having an opinion.

Umberto Eco

Perhaps I am not as wise as I like to think I am.

Umberto Eco

I feel that I am a scholar who only with the left hand writes novels.

Umberto Eco

My father was an accountant and his father was a typographer.

Umberto Eco

As an adolescent I wrote comic books, because I read lots of them, and fantasy novels set in Malaysia and Central Africa.

Umberto Eco

Conspiracies do exist. Probably in this moment in New York there is an economic group making a conspiracy in order to buy three banks. But if they succeed, they are immediately discovered.

Umberto Eco

The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity.

Umberto Eco

Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.

Umberto Eco

Dan Brown is a character from 'Foucault's Pendulum!' I invented him. He shares my characters' fascinations - the world conspiracy of Rosicrucians, Masons, and Jesuits. The role of the Knights Templar. The hermetic secret. The principle that everything is connected. I suspect Dan Brown might not even exist.

Umberto Eco

I think a book should be judged 10 years later, after reading and re-reading it.

Umberto Eco

All the religious wars that have caused blood to be shed for centuries arise from passionate feelings and facile counter-positions, such as Us and Them, good and bad, white and black.

Umberto Eco

Libraries can take the place of God.

Umberto Eco

Berlusconi is a genius in communication. Otherwise, he would never have become so rich.

Umberto Eco

There is no great sport in having bullets flying about one in every direction, but I find they have less horror when among them than when in anticipation.

Umberto Eco

My grandfather had a particularly important influence on my life, even though I didn't visit him often, since he lived about three miles out of town and he died when I was six. He was remarkably curious about the world, and he read lots of books.

Umberto Eco

How does a person feel when looking at the sky? He thinks that he doesn't have enough tongues to describe what he sees. Nevertheless, people have never stopping describing the sky, simply listing what they see.

Umberto Eco