My poetry had the same functional origin and the same formal configuration as teenage acne. — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
When the poet is in love, he is incapable of writing poetry on love. He has to write when he remembers that… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“And so it was that the Poet, through an excess of theological refinement, was unable to satisfy his coarse carnal passion.” — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
Whenever a poet or preacher, chief or wizard spouts gibberish, the human race spends centuries deciphering the message. — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
For Mallarmé naming an object meant suppressing three-quarters of its poetic pleasure (which consists in the joy of guessing bit by bit… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“Poetry… it consumed Sappho’s young years, it nourished Goethe’s old age. Drug, the Greeks called it, both poison and medicine.” — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings. — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
Once you reach your fifties, you have to stop being interested in the present and write only on Elizabethan poets. — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
Stopgaps do belong to the internal economy of the form, since the Whole requires them, even if only in a subordinate position… — 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… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
You cannot believe what you are saying." "Well, no. Hardly ever. But the philosopher is like the poet. The latter composes ideal… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
I do not remember where I read that there are two kinds of poets: the good poets, who at a certain point… — Umberto Eco Copy Share Image
“It is necessary to create constraints, in order to invent freely. In poetry the constraint can be imposed by meter, foot, rhyme,… — 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 and princesses are restored to life by a kiss, but that world, purely possible and unrealistic, must exist according to structures defined at the outset (we have to know whether it is a world where a… — Umberto Eco Copy Share
“…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 of organized information to be fed in. The success of a metaphor is a function of the sociocultural format of the interpreting subjects; encyclopedia. In this perspective, metaphors are produced solely on the basis of a… — Umberto Eco Copy Share
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 for purposes of genocide, whereas coffee made with an American percolator, such as you find in private houses or in humble luncheonettes, served with eggs and bacon, is delicious, fragrant, goes down like pure spring water,… — Umberto Eco Copy Share
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
