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
I am not on Facebook and on Twitter because the purpose of my life is to avoid messages. I receive too many messages from the world, and so I try to avoid that.
History is a blood-drenched enigma and the world an error.
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.
There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics.
You are always born under the wrong sign, and to live in this world properly you have to rewrite your own horoscope day by day.
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.
Because of lies, we can produce and invent a possible world.
When one starts writing a book, especially a novel, even the humblest person in the world hopes to become Homer.
Nothing can shake my belief that this world is the fruit of a dark god whose shadow I extend.
For, I must tell you, in this world where today all lose their minds over many & wondrous Machines -- some of which, alas, you can see also in this Siege -- I construct Aristotelian Machines, that allow anyone to see with Words...
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.
There, Master Niketas,’ Baudolino said, ‘when I was not prey to the temptations of this world, I devoted my nights to imagining other worlds. A bit with the help of wine, and a bit with that of the green honey. 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.
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.