823 Quotes by Umberto Eco

Your masters at Oxford have taught you to idolize reason, drying up the prophetic capacities of your heart!

When the poet is in love, he is incapable of writing poetry on love. He has to write when he remembers that he was in love.

Nothing is more fleeting than external form, which withers and alters like the flowers of the field at the appearance of autumn.

At a certain moment, I decided to write a story. I had no more small children to tell them stories.

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 know you know.

When someone has to intervene to defend the liberty of the press, that society is sick.

If Bush had read all the documents about the Russians and British in Afghanistan in the 19th century, he would have not done what he did in the 21st. He would have understood how difficult it was to control this territory. He probably didn't read them.

I feel that I am a scholar who only with the left hand writes novels.

Yesterday's rose endures in its name, we hold empty names.