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 Copy Share Image
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… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“What model reader did I want as i was writing? An accomplice, to be sure, one who would play my game.” — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“True,' I said, amazed. Until then I had thought each book spoke of the things, human or devine, that lie outside books.… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“Adso of Melk: The Koran, the Bible of the infidels, a perverse book … William of Baskerville: A book containing a wisdom… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“The good thing about the studium is the that you learn from your teachers, true, but even more from your fellows, especially… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“There are magic moments, involving great physical fatigue and intense motor excitement, that produce visions of people known in the past ("en… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“Here's a book about gnomes, undines, salamanders, elves, sylphs, fairies, but it, too, brings in the origins of Aryan civilization. The SS,… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
My collection of rare books concerns only books that don't tell the truth. — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
When one starts writing a book, especially a novel, even the humblest person in the world hopes to become Homer. — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“There, I said to myself, are the reasons for the silence and darkness that surround the library: it is the preserve of… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
“Good libraries hold several millions of books: even if we read a book a day, we would read only 365 a year,… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
My maternal grandmother - she was a compulsive reader. She had only been through five grades of elementary school, but she was… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“Ok now--I don't read "all the time." Remember, that these ratings are over quite a while. I'll try to put in some… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
We stopped to browse in the cases, and now that William - with his new glasses on his nose - could linger… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening,… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
Naturally, everything depends on one's background books and on what one is looking for. — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“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 Copy Share Image
The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs,… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“recognize the evidence through which the world speaks to us like a great book...” — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“When a spy sells something entirely new, all he needs to do is recount something you could find in any second-hand book… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“Dostoevsky was writing about losers. The main character of The Iliad, Hector, is a loser. It’s very boring to talk about winners.… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
I wrote a novel because I had a yen to do it. I believe this is sufficient reason to set out to… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
Followers of the occult believe in only what they already know, and in those things that confirm what they have already learned. — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“This has nothing to do with realism (even if it explains also realism). A completely real world can be constructed, in which asses fly… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“…there’s nothing in this world that demands more caution than the truth. To tell the truth is like leeching one’s own heart...” — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
The book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. Once invented, it cannot be improved. You cannot make a spoon that is… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“No algorithm exists for the metaphor, nor can a metaphor be produced by means of a computer’s precise instructions, no matter what the volume… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
With all of its defects, the global market makes war less likely, even between the USA and China. — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
The Fundamental Principle that governs - or ought to govern -human affairs if we wish to avoid misunderstandings, conflicts, or pointless utopias, is negotiation. — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
American coffee can be a pale solution served at a temperature of 100 degrees centigrade in plastic thermos cups, usually obligatory in railroad stations… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
Listening doesn't mean trying to understand. Anything, however trifling, may be of use one day. What matters is to know something that others don't… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
They say that a cat, if it falls from a window and hits its nose, can lose its sense of smell and then, because… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
