Quotes from Umberto Eco

Hastaland???mda kendimi senin ellerine teslim edeyim; sana bilmediklerim dahil hakk?mda her ?eyi anlatay?m ve sen benim ruhumun efendisi ol, ister miydin?

The book has to give the idea of another kind of newspaper, has to show how I labored away for a year to create a model of journalism independent of all pressure, implying that the venture failed because it was impossible to have a free voice

Counterfactual conditionals are always true, because the premise is false. But I was there that day, so now I am where I am.

It seems to me that more plots have been imagined than really exist.

You must consider that the librarian (if not overworked or neurotic) is happy when he can demonstrate two things: the quality of his memory and erudition and the richness of his library, especially if it is small. The more isolated and disregarded the library, the more the librarian is consumed with sorrow for its underestimation. A person who asks for help makes the librarian happy.

Superstition brings bad luck.

The Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt.

La caca es lo más personal y reservado que tenemos. El resto pueden conocerlo todos, la expresión de tu cara, tu mirada, tus gestos (...) Los seres humanos aman el perfume de sus propios excrementos pero no el de los ajenos. En el fondo, forman parte de nuestro cuerpo

And he continues: "Thus it is increasingly necessary you recognize that other congregations of material bodies exist elsewhere in the universe, like this of our world, which the ether encircles in eager embrace

In America you don't say, "Give me another coffee"; you ask for "More coffee"; you don't say that cigarette A is longer than cigarette B, but that there's "more" of it, more than you're used to having, more than you might want, leaving a surplus to throw away—that's prosperity.

I hated my mother who had gone without telling me, I hated my father who had done nothing to stop her, I hated God because he had willed such a thing to happen, and I hated my grandfather because he thought it normal for God to will such things.

An illiterate person who dies, let us say at my age, has lived one life, whereas I have lived the lives of Napoleon, Caesar, d'Artagnan. So I always encourage young people to read books, because it's an ideal way to develop a great memory and a ravenous multiple personality. And then at the end of your life you have lived countless lives, which is a fabulous privilege.

You cannot escape one infinite, I told myself, by fleeing to another; you cannot escape the revelation of the identical by taking refuge in the illusion of the multiple.

How beautiful the world is, and how ugly labyrinths are,' I said, relieved. 'How beautiful the world would be if there was a procedure for moving through labyrinths,' my master replied.

Sólo el bibliotecario, además de saber, está autorizado a moverse por el laberinto de los libros, sólo él sabe dónde encontrarlos y dónde guardarlos, sólo él es responsable de su conservación...

William made an ejaculation in his own language that I didn't understand, nor did the abbot understand it, and perhaps it was best for us both, because the word William uttered had an obscene hissing sound.

Often the object of a desire, when desire is transformed into hope, becomes more real than reality itself.

Those whom you cannot love you should, rather, fear.

El autor debería morirse después de haber escrito su obra. Para allanarle el camino al texto.

writing a thesis is like writing a book, working incrementally with the professor is a communication exercise that assumes the existence of an audience

I like the notion of stubborn incuriosity. To cultivate a stubborn incuriosity, you have to limit yourself to certain areas of knowledge. You cannot be totally greedy. You have to oblige yourself not to learn everything. Or else you will learn nothing.

But metaphors set up not only similarities but also oppositions. A cup and a shield are alike in their form (round and concave), but opposite in their function (peace vs. war), just as Ares and Dionysus are alike insofar as they are gods, but opposite with regard to the ends they pursue and to the instruments they use.

There is nothing better than imagining other worlds," he said, "to forget the painful one we live in. At least so I thought then. I hadn't yet realized that, imagining other worlds, you end up changing this one.

Terrorism is not the enemy of the great systems; on the contrary, it is their natural counterweight, accepted, programmed.