Quotes from Umberto Eco

Followers of the occult believe in only what they already know, and in those things that confirm what they have already learned.

It comes down to a question of attention: it's difficult to use the Net distractedly, unlike the television or the radio.

I like nicotine because it excites my brain and helps me work.

I developed a passion for the Middle Ages the same way some people develop a passion for coconuts.

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.

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.

A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work; otherwise he would have not written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations.

Every European goes on the streets and sees medieval churches. Not if you live in Indianapolis. The most exciting letters I received were from people in places like that.

Every European goes on the streets and sees medieval churches. Not if you live in Indianapolis.

The photograph [of Che Guevara], for a civilization now accustomed to thinking in images, was not the description of a single event... it was an argument.

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.

I could work in the shower if I had plastic paper.

Homer's work hits again and again on the topos of the inexpressible. People will always do that.

One can be a great poet and be politically stupid.

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.

I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death.

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.

Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.

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.

There are more people than you think who want to have a challenging experience, in which they are obliged to reflect about the past.

Never let the past close your wings to fly today to your future

Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.

The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.