Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco OMRIwas an Italian novelist, literary critic, philosopher, semiotician and university professor. He is best known internationally for his 1980 historical mystery novel Il nome della rosa, an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, with biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory. He later wrote other novels, including Il pendolo di Foucaultand L'isola del giorno prima. His novel Il cimitero di Praga, released in 2010, was a best-seller...
NationalityItalian
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth5 January 1932
CountryItaly
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."
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.
The faith a movement proclaims doesn't count: what counts is the hope it offers. All heresies are the banner of a reality, an exclusion. Scratch the heresy and you will find the leper. Every battle against heresy wants only this: to keep the leper as he is.
Better reality than a dream: if something is real, then it's real and you're not to blame.
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.
The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.
That is a real attitude - to see everything as being meaningful, even the less important things, to prove something, even the greater problems of life.
All the theories of conspiracy were always a way to escape our responsibilities. It is a very important kind of social sickness by which we avoid recognizing reality such as it is and avoid our responsibilities.
The real hero is always a hero by mistake.
He had prepared his death much earlier, in his imagination, unaware that his imagination, more creative than he, was planning the reality of that death.
If people buy my books for vanity, I consider it a tax on idiocy.
There are books on our shelves we haven't read and doubtless never will, that each of us has probably put to one side in the belief that we will read them later on, perhaps even in another life.
Berlusconi is a genius in communication. Otherwise, he would never have become so rich.
The grandeur of Jerusalem is also... its problem.