Quotessence
Home / Authors / Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco Quotes

Essayist

Filter quotes by topic

AllIfsBookWritingUmberto EcoWorldBelievePeopleThinkingKnowsNovel

Famous Umberto Eco Quotes

“Usually naive interviewers hover between two mutually contradictory convictions: one, that a text we call creative develops almost instantaneously in the mystic heat of inspirational raptus; or the other, that the writer has followed a recipe, a kind of secret set of rules that they would like to see revealed. There is no set of rules, or, rather, there are many, varied and flexible rules.”

KindTwoSecretCreativeConvictionHeatRecipesNaiveFlexibleContradictoryMysticInterviewers
Author:Umberto Eco
Create image

“And we, inhabitants of the great coral of the Cosmos, believe the atom (which still we cannot see) to be full matter, whereas, it too, like everything else, is but an embroidery of voids in the Void, and we give the name of being, dense and even eternal, to that dance of inconsistencies, that infinite extension that is identified with absolute Nothingness and that spins from its own non-being the illusion of everything.”

GivingBelieveStillsMatterNamesCreationEternalIllusionAbsolutesInfiniteCosmosAtomsVoidNothingnessExtensionsDenseInconsistencyEmbroidery
Book:The Island of the Day Before
Create image

“There is only one thing that arouses animals more than pleasure, and that is pain. Under torture you are as if under the dominion of those grasses that produce visions. Everything you have heard told, everything you have read returns to your mind, as if you were being transported, not toward heaven, but toward hell. Under torture you say not only what the inquisitor wants, but also what you imagine might please him, because a bond (this, truly, diabolical) is established between you and him.”

IfsWantMindMightPainHeavenPleasureAnimalVisionHellImagineOne ThingHeardAtheismProduceReturnPleasePositive AtheismGrassTortureDominionDiabolical
Book:The Name of the Rose
Create image