Umberto Eco
I love the secrecy of writing fiction. When I write a novel, I don't tell anybody what I'm doing. I'm living in my private world. And it's a great sensation.
I like nicotine because it excites my brain and helps me work.
The author may not interpret. But he must tell why and how he wrote his book.
I don't want to write a novel per year. I know that I need a break of one or two years. So maybe I invent some new, urgent activity so I don't fall into the trap of starting a new novel.
My maternal grandmother - she was a compulsive reader. She had only been through five grades of elementary school, but she was a member of the municipal library, and she brought home two or three books a week for me. They could be dime novels or Balzac.
To play the trumpet, you must train your lips for a long time. When I was twelve or thirteen I was a good player, but I lost the skill and now I play very badly. I do it every day even so. The reason is that I want to return to my childhood. For me, the trumpet is evidence of the sort of young man I was.
If somebody writes a book and doesn't care for the survival of that book, he's an imbecile.
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.
Our most noted satirists are true columnists, and their opinions can be worth more than any well-documented expose.
I was a fervent Catholic, and I belonged to the national organizations, even becoming one of the national leaders, until the age of 21, 22.
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.
I have to admit that I only read 'War and Peace' when I was 40. But I knew the basics before then.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We live for books.Collection: Book
To survive, you must tell stories.Collection: Stories
I always assume that a good book is more intelligent than its author. It can say things that the writer is not aware of.Collection: Book
The good of a book lies in its being read.Collection: Book
When your true enemies are too strong, you have to choose weaker enemies.Collection: Strong
Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means...Collection: Book
You can be obsessed by remorse all your life, not because you chose the wrong thing- you can always repent, atone : but because you never had the chance to prove to yourself that you would have chosen the right thing.Collection: Book
Books always speak of other books.Collection: Book
I write stories about conspiracies and paranoid characters while I am, in fact, a very skeptical person.Collection: Stories
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.Collection: Stories
Beauty has never been absolute and immutable but has taken on different aspects depending on the historical period and the country.Collection: Country
Books are menaced by books. Any excess of information produces silence.Collection: Book
All of us were slowly losing that intellectual light that allows you always to tell the similar from the identical, the metaphorical from the real.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Country
My collection of rare books concerns only books that don’t tell the truth.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Country
We know that sensory phenomena are transcribed in the photographic emulsion in such a way that even if there is a causal link with the real phenomena, the graphic images can be considered as wholly arbitrary with respect to these phenomena.Collection: Real
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.Collection: Book
We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay.Collection: Book
The real hero is always a hero by mistake.Collection: Real
Naturally, everything depends on one’s background books and on what one is looking for.Collection: Book
But the purpose of a story is to teach and to please at once, and what it teaches is how to recognize the snares of the world.Collection: Stories
Better reality than a dream: if something is real, then it’s real and you’re not to blame.Collection: Real
The cultivated person’s first duty is to be always prepared to rewrite the encyclopedia.Collection: Firsts
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.Collection: Book
A book is a fragile creature. It suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands.Collection: Book
If somebody writes a book and doesn’t care for the survival of that book, he’s an imbecile.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Romance
New Orleans is not in the grip of a neurosis of a denied past; it passes out memories generously like a great lord; it doesn’t have to pursue “the real thing.”Collection: Real
I am an old consumer of papers. I cannot avoid reading my newspapers every morning.Collection: Reading
In the construction of Immortal Fame you need first of all a cosmic shamelessness.Collection: Firsts
Since I became a novelist I have discovered that I am biased. Either I think a new novel is worse than mine and I don’t like it, or I suspect it is better than my novels and I don’t like it.Collection: Reading