Book Quotes by Umberto Eco

We live for books.

— Umberto Eco

Books always speak of other books.

— Umberto Eco

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry.

— Umberto Eco

“The book is like the wheel - once invented, it cannot be bettered.”

— Umberto Eco

I love the smell of book ink in the morning.

— Umberto Eco

Books are menaced by books. Any excess of information produces silence.

— Umberto Eco

The good of a book lies in its being read.

— Umberto Eco

I always assume that a good book is more intelligent than its author. It can say things that the writer is not…

— Umberto Eco

As an adolescent I wrote comic books, because I read lots of them, and fantasy novels set in Malaysia and Central Africa.

— Umberto Eco

My collection of rare books concerns only books that don't tell the truth.

— Umberto Eco

When one starts writing a book, especially a novel, even the humblest person in the world hopes to become Homer.

— Umberto Eco

If somebody writes a book and doesn't care for the survival of that book, he's an imbecile.

— Umberto Eco

To read a paper book is another experience: you can do it on a ship, on the branch of a tree, on…

— Umberto Eco

“someone has mixed and shuffled the words of the Book more than was right.”

— Umberto Eco

We live for books. A sweet mission in this world dominated by disorder and decay.

— Umberto Eco

Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and…

— Umberto Eco

I think every professor and writer is in some way an exhibitionist because his or her normal activity is a theatrical one.…

— Umberto Eco

There are no stories without meaning. And I am one of those men who can find it even when others fail to…

— Umberto Eco

libraries are fascinating places: sometimes you feel you are under the canopy of a railway station, and when you read books about…

— Umberto Eco

There are books on our shelves we haven't read and doubtless never will, that each of us has probably put to one…

— Umberto Eco

The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon…

— Umberto Eco

My maternal grandmother - she was a compulsive reader. She had only been through five grades of elementary school, but she was…

— Umberto Eco

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves…

— Umberto Eco

There must be a connection between the lust for power and impotentia coeundi. I liked Marx, I was sure that he and…

— Umberto Eco

To escape the power of the unknown, to prove to yourself that you don't believe in it, you accept its spells. Like…

— Umberto Eco

Certainly, light fiction exists and encompasses mysteries or second-class romance novels, books that are read on the beach, whose only aim is…

— Umberto Eco

“True,' I said, amazed. Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or devine, that lie outside books.…

— Umberto Eco

“Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or divine, that lie outside books. Now I realized that…

— Umberto Eco

“It seems that the Parisian Oulipo group has recently constructed a matrix of all possible murder-story situations and has found that there…

— Umberto Eco

“But I must hope that books possess a life of a more varied kind than their authors' myopia concedes to them. A…

— Umberto Eco

We stopped to browse in the cases, and now that William - with his new glasses on his nose - could linger…

— Umberto Eco

Naturally, everything depends on one's background books and on what one is looking for.

— Umberto Eco

“the book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. once invented, it cannot be improved”

— Umberto Eco

The author may not interpret. But he must tell why and how he wrote his book.

— Umberto Eco

A book is a fragile creature. It suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements, clumsy hands.

— Umberto Eco

I think a book should be judged 10 years later, after reading and re-reading it.

— Umberto Eco

There are magic moments, involving great physical fatigue and intense motor excitement, that produce visions of people known in the past. As…

— Umberto Eco

A monk should surely love his books with humility, wishing their good and not the glory of his own curiosity; but what…

— Umberto Eco

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs,…

— Umberto Eco

There are more books in the world than hours in which to read them. We are thus deeply influenced by books we…

— Umberto Eco