Since I became a novelist I have discovered that I am biased. Either I think a new novel is worse than mine and I don’t like it, or I suspect it is better than my novels and I don’t like it. - Umberto Eco
I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly. - Umberto Eco
We live for books. - Umberto Eco
He is always on the brink of suicide... because he seeks salvation through the routine formulas suggested to him by the society in which he lives. - Umberto Eco
I felt like poisoning a monk. - Umberto Eco
The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else. - Umberto Eco
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. - Umberto Eco
In this universe of ours, with its wealth of errors and legends, historical data and false information, one absolute truth is the fact that Superman is Clark Kent. All the rest is always open to debate. - Umberto Eco
No cierres mis labios abriendo los tuyos. - Umberto Eco
De mens bedrijft het kwaad nooit zo hartstochtig en vol overgave als wanneer hij dat doet uit godsdienstige overtuiging. - Umberto Eco
But what use is the unicorn to you if your intellect doesn't believe in it? - Umberto Eco
Μου φτάνει που ξέρω να διαβάζω, γιατί έτσι μαθαίνω αυτά που δεν ξέρω, ενώ όταν γράφεις, γράφεις μόνο αυτά που ξέρεις ήδη. - Umberto Eco
I like the notion of stubborn incuriosity. To cultivate a stubborn incuriosity, you have to limit yourself to certain areas of knowledge. You cannot be totally greedy. You have to oblige yourself not to learn everything. Or else you will learn nothing. - Umberto Eco
Translation is the art of failure. - Umberto Eco
If you want to use television to teach somebody, you must first teachthem how to use television. - Umberto Eco
We are a pluralist civilisation because we allow mosques to be built in our countries, and we are not going to stop simply because Christian missionaries are thrown into prison in Kabul. If we did so, we, too, would become Taliban. - Umberto Eco
Throughout our lives, after all, we look for a story of our origins, to tell us why we were born and why we have lived. - Umberto Eco
I love the smell of book ink in the morning. - Umberto Eco