Background Image
...
If You Want To Use Television To Teach Somebody, You Must First Teach Them How To Use Television.
-Umberto Eco
...
Please Wait....
Translating....

If You Want To

Umberto Eco
...
If You Want To Use Television To Teach Somebody, You Must First Teach Them How To Use Television.

Understanding the Quote: "if you want to use television to teach somebody, you must first..."

This quote by Umberto Eco reflects deeply on the theme of use. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Use, Television, Want, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Umberto Eco interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco is celebrated for insightful thoughts on use and television. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 5
Topic
Use
Television
Want
More From Umberto Eco
From Lies To Forgeries The Step Is Not So Long, And I Have Written Technical Essays On The Logic Of Forgeries And On The Influence Of Forgeries On History.
Lying
Long
Steps
You Cannot Escape One Infinite, I Told Myself, By Fleeing To Another. You Cannot Escape The Revelation Of The Identical By Taking Refuge In The Illusion Of The Multiple.
Fleeing
Infinite
Illusion
I Don't Know, Maybe We're Always Looking For The Right Place, Maybe It's Within Reach, But We Don't Recognize It. Maybe To Recognize It, We Have To Believe In It.
Believe
Right Place
Within Reach
Love Flourishes In Expectation. Expectation Strolls Through The Spacious Fields Of Time Towards Opportunity.
Opportunity
Expectations
Fields
All The Religious Wars That Have Caused Blood To Be Shed For Centuries Arise From Passionate Feelings And Facile Counter-positions, Such As Us And Them, Good And Bad, White And Black.
Religious
War
Blood
The Real Hero Is Always A Hero By Mistake; He Dreams Of Being An Honest Coward Like Everybody Else.
Sports
Dream
Real
I Write Stories About Conspiracies And Paranoid Characters While I Am, In Fact, A Very Skeptical Person.
Character
Writing
Facts
The Older I Grow And The More I Abandon Myself To God's Will, The Less I Value Intelligence That Wants To Know And Will That Wants To Do; And As The Only Element Of Salvation I Recognize Faith, Which Can Wait Patiently, Without Asking Too Many Questions.
Waiting
Asking
Elements
Deciding What Is Being Talked About Is A Kind Of Interpretive Bet.
Kind
Writing Doesn't Mean Necessarily Putting Words On A Sheet Of Paper. You Can Write A Chapter While Walking Or Eating.
Writing
Mean
Paper
A Novel Is A Machine For Generating Interpretations.
Machines
Statistics
Interpretation
The Wise Man Does Not Discriminate; He Gathers All The Shreds Of Light, From Wherever They May Come.
Wise
Freedom
Men
I Dared, For The First And Last Time In My Life, To Express A Theological Conclusion: "but How Can A Necessary Being Exist Totally Polluted With The Possible? What Difference Is There, Then, Between God And Primogenial Chaos? Isn't Affirming God's Absolute Omnipotence And His Absolute Freedom With Regard To His Own Choices Tantamount To Demonstrating That God Does Not Exist?
Omnipotence
Differences
Choices
When One Starts Writing A Book, Especially A Novel, Even The Humblest Person In The World Hopes To Become Homer.
Book
Writing
World
A Secret Is Powerful When It Is Empty.
Powerful
Secret
Empty
Beauty Is, In Some Way, Boring. Even If Its Concept Changes Through The Ages... A Beautiful Object Must Always Follow Certain Rules. A Beautiful Nose Shouldn't Be Longer Than That Or Shorter Than That, On The Contrary, An Ugly Nose Can Be As Long As The One Of Pinocchio, Or As Big As The Trunk Of An Elephant, Or Like The Beak Of An Eagle, And So Ugliness Is Unpredictable, And Offers An Infinite Range Of Possibility. Beauty Is Finite, Ugliness Is Infinite Like God.
Beautiful
Eagles
Elephants
What Does Culture Want? To Make Infinity Comprehensible.
Doe
Culture
Want
The Truth Is An Anagram Of An Anagram.
Truth
Truth Is
Anagrams
What Is Love? There Is Nothing In The World, Neither Man Nor Devil Nor Any Thing, That I Hold As Suspect As Love, For It Penetrates The Soul More Than Any Other Thing. Nothing Exists That So Fills And Binds The Heart As Love Does. Therefore, Unless You Have Those Weapons That Subdue It, The Soul Plunges Through Love Into An Immense Abyss.
Love
Heart
Men
The United States Needed A Civil War To Unite Properly.
War
United States
Needed
I Consider Always The Adult Life To Be The Continuous Retrieval Of Childhood.
Childhood
Adults
When We Traded The Results Of Our Fantasies, It Seemed To Us-and Rightly-that We Had Proceeded By Unwarranted Associations, By Shortcuts So Extraordinary That, If Anyone Had Accused Us Of Really Believing Them, We Would Have Been Ashamed.
Believe
Thinking
Association
My Generation Knew Pretty Well What Happened 50 Years Before Our Birth. Now I Follow All The Quiz Programs Because They Are A Paramount Example Of The Span Of Memory Of The Young Generation - They Are Able To Remember Everything That Happened In Their Life But Not Before.
Memories
Remembers Everything
Young Generation
As An Adolescent I Wrote Comic Books, Because I Read Lots Of Them, And Fantasy Novels Set In Malaysia And Central Africa.
Book
Fantasy Novels
Comic
There Are Two Kinds Of Friendship: One Is Genuine Affection, The Other Is Inability To Refuse.
Two
Stupidity
Inability
It Is Necessary To Meditate Early, And Often, On The Art Of Dying To Succeed Later In Doing It Properly Just Once.
Art
Dying
Succeed
The Court Jester Had The Right To Say The Most Outrageous Things To The King. Everything Was Permitted During Carnival, Even The Songs That The Roman Legionnaires Would Sing, Calling Julius Caesar "queen", Alluding, In A Very Transparent Way, To His Real, Or Presumed, Homosexual Escapades.
Song
Kings
Queens
We Invented The Car, And It Made It Easier For Us To Crash And Die. If I Gave A Car To My Grandfather, He Would Die In Five Minutes, While I Have Grown Up Slowly To Accept Speed.
Car
Grandfather
Speed
The Book Is Like The Spoon, Scissors, The Hammer, The Wheel. Once Invented, It Cannot Be Improved. You Cannot Make A Spoon That Is Better Than A Spoon... The Book Has Been Thoroughly Tested, And It's Very Hard To See How It Could Be Improved On For Its Current Purposes.
Book
Hammers
Purpose
For Many Years I Have Devoted Articles And Essays To Newspapers, From The Inside. So Criticism Of The Newspapers Was A Topic That I Practiced For A Long Time.
Years
Long
Criticism
Show Not What Has Been Done, But What Can Be. How Beautiful The World Would Be If There Were A Procedure For Moving Through Labyrinths.
Beautiful
Moving
Labyrinth
Every Great Thinker Is Someone Else's Moron.
Insult
Moron
Thinker
The First Quality Of An Honest Man Is Contempt For Religion, Which Would Have Us Afraid Of The Most Natural Thing In The World, Which Is Death; And Would Have Us Hate The One Beautiful Thing Destiny Has Given Us, Which Is Life.
Beautiful
Hate
Destiny
I Have A Good Memory. But I Would Be Interested In Memory Even If I Had A Bad Memory, Because I Believe That Memory Is Our Soul. If We Lose Our Memory Completely, We Are Without A Soul.
Memories
Believe
Soul
[i Am Fascinated By Stupidity] Because Normal Intelligence Is Boring. Two Plus Two Makes Four - Finished. You Have No Possibilities! Stupidity Is Infinite. Two Plus Two Can Make Billions Of Different Numbers.
Two
Numbers
Stupidity
Perhaps I Am Not As Wise As I Like To Think I Am.
Wise
Thinking
Given That There Are Seven Billion People Living On This Earth, There Is A Consistent Quantity Of Imbecile Or Idiot, Okay. Previously, These People Could Express Themselves Only With Their Friends Or At The Bar After Two Or Three Glasses Of Something, And They Said Every Silliness, And People Laughed. Now They Have The Possibility To Show Up On The Internet. And So, On The Internet, Along With The Messages Of A Lot Of Interesting And Important People - Even The Pope Is Writing On Twitter - We Have A Great Quantity Of Idiots.
Writing
Two
Glasses
It Is Obvious That The Newspaper Produces The Opinion Of The Readers.
Opinion
Produce
Newspapers
In Other Words, Although I Don't Like Them, We Do Need Noble-spirited Souls.
Soul
Needs
Noble
A Great Problem Of The Internet Is How To Filter Information, How To Discard What Is Not Relevant Or What Is Silly And To Keep Only The Important Information.
Silly
Important
Filters
A Secret Is Powerful When It Is Empty. People Often Mention The "masonic Secret." What On Earth Is The Masonic Secret? No One Can Tell. As Long As It Remains Empty It Can Be Filled Up With Every Possible Notion, And It Has Power.
Powerful
Filled Up
Long
Someone Said That Patriotism Is The Last Refuge Of Cowards; Those Without Moral Principles Usually Wrap A Flag Around Themselves, And Those Bastards Always Talk About The Purity Of Race.
Race
Coward
Principles
I Am An Old Consumer Of Papers. I Cannot Avoid Reading My Newspapers Every Morning.
Morning
Reading
Paper
The French, The Italians, The Germans, The Spanish And The English Have Spent Centuries Killing Each Other.
Killing Each Other
Killing
Century
Our Most Noted Satirists Are True Columnists And Their Opinions Can Be Worth More Than Any Well-documented Exposé.
Opinion
Columnists
Wells
He Who Laughs Does Not Believe In What He Laughs At, But Neither Does He Hate It. Therefore, Laughing At Evil Means Not Preparing Oneself To Combat It, And Laughing At Good Means Denying The Power Through Which Good Is Self-propagating.
Hate
Believe
Mean
Once Upon A Time There Were Mass Media, And They Were Wicked, Of Course, And There Was A Guilty Party. Then There Were The Virtuous Voices That Accused The Criminals. And Art (ah, What Luck!) Offered Alternatives, For Those Who Were Not Prisoners To The Mass Media.
Art
Media
Voice
I Have Always Been Fascinated By Paranoid People Imagining Conspiracies. I Am Fascinated By This In A Critical Way.
People
Way
Conspiracy
I Lacked The Courage To Investigate The Weaknesses Of The Wicked, Because I Discovered They Are The Same As The Weaknesses Of The Saintly.
Wicked
Weakness
I Think Of Myself As A Serious Professor Who, During The Weekend, Writes Novels.
Writing
Weekend
Thinking
Terrorism [is] A Biological Consequence Of The Multinationals, Just As A Day Of Fever Is The Reasonable Price Of An Effective Vaccine . . . The Conflict Is Between Great Powers, Not Between Demons And Heroes. Unhappily, Therefore, Is The Nation That Finds The "heroes" Underfoot, Especially If They Still Think In Religious Terms And Involve The Population In Their Bloody Ascent To An Uninhabited Paradise.
Religious
Hero
Thinking
New Orleans Is Not In The Grip Of A Neurosis Of A Denied Past; It Passes Out Memories Generously Like A Great Lord; It Doesn't Have To Pursue "the Real Thing."
Memories
Real
Past
Idiot. Above Her Head Was The Only Stable Point In The Cosmos, The Only Refuge From The Damnation Of The Panta Rei, And She Guessed It Was The Pendulum's Business. A Moment Later The Couple Went Off -- He, Trained On Some Textbook That Had Blunted His Capacity For Wonder, She, Inert And Insensitive To The Thrill Of The Infinite, Both Oblivious Of The Awesomeness Of Their Encounter -- Their First And Last Encounter -- With The One, The Ein-sof, The Ineffable. How Could You Fail To Kneel Down Before This Altar Of Certitude?
Couple
Encounters
Damnation
The Enlightenment, The Age Of Reason, Is Seen As The Beginning Of Modern Depravity.
Age
Enlightenment
Reason
History Is Rich With Adventurous Men, Long On Charisma, With A Highly Developed Instinct For Their Own Interests, Who Have Pursued Personal Power - Bypassing Parliaments And Constitutions, Distributing Favours To Their Minions, And Conflating Their Own Desires With The Interests Of The Community.
Men
Long
Community
The Fundamental Principle That Governs - Or Ought To Govern -human Affairs If We Wish To Avoid Misunderstandings, Conflicts, Or Pointless Utopias, Is Negotiation.
Wish
Principles
Fundamentals
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.
Thinking
Novelists
Biased
For What I Saw At The Abbey Then (and Will Now Recount) Caused Me To Think That Often Inquisitors Create Heretics. And Not Only In The Sense That They Imagine Heretics Where These Do Not Exist, But Also That Inquisitors Repress The Heretical Putrefaction So Vehemently That Many Are Driven To Share In It, In Their Hatred For The Judges. Truly, A Circle Conceived By The Devil. God Preserve Us.
Book
Thinking
Circles
If Two Things Don't Fit, But You Believe Both Of Them, Thinking That Somewhere, Hidden, There Must Be A Third Thing That Connects Them, That's Credulity.
Witty
Believe
Science
Fools Are In Great Demand, Especially On Social Occasions. They Embarrass Everyone But Provide Material For Conversation. In Their Positive Form, They Become Diplomats.
Demand
Diplomats
Fool
I Feel That I Am A Scholar Who Only With The Left Hand Writes Novels.
Writing
Hands
Left Hand
The Belief That Time Is A Linear, Directed Sequence Running From A To B Is A Modern Illusion. In Fact, It Can Also Go From B To A, The Effect Producing The Cause.
Running
Causes
Facts
Love Is Wiser Than Wisdom.
Love Is
Wiser
The Pleasures Of Love Are Pains That Become Desirable, Where Sweetness And Torment Blend, And So Love Is Voluntary Insanity, Infernal Paradise, And Celestial Hell - In Short, Harmony Of Opposite Yearnings, Sorrowful Laughter, Soft Diamond.
Love
Pain
Laughter
There, Master Niketas,’ Baudolino Said, ‘when I Was Not Prey To The Temptations Of This World, I Devoted My Nights To Imagining Other Worlds. A Bit With The Help Of Wine, And A Bit With That Of The Green Honey. There Is Nothing Better Than Imagining Other Worlds,’ He Said, ‘to Forget The Painful One We Live In. At Least So I Thought Then. I Hadn’t Yet Realized That, Imagining Other Worlds, You End Up Changing This One.
Wine
Night
Other Worlds
I Could Work In The Shower If I Had Plastic Paper.
Paper
Plastic
Showers
The Step Between Ecstatic Vision And Sinful Frenzy Is All Too Brief.
Vision
Steps
Ecstatic
There Are No Stories Without Meaning. And I Am One Of Those Men Who Can Find It Even When Others Fail To See It. Afterwards The Story Becomes The Book Of The Living, Like A Blaring Trumpet That Raises From The Tomb Those Who Have Been Dust For Centuries.
Book
Men
Dust
Where Else? I Belong To A Lost Generation And Am Comfortable Only In The Company Of Others Who Are Lost And Lonely.
Lonely
Generations
Lost
Followers Of The Occult Believe In Only What They Already Know, And In Those Things That Confirm What They Have Already Learned.
Believe
Followers
Occult
Your Masters At Oxford Have Taught You To Idolize Reason, Drying Up The Prophetic Capacities Of Your Heart!
Heart
Oxford
Taught
The Author May Not Interpret. But He Must Tell Why And How He Wrote His Book.
Book
May
My Grandfather Had A Particularly Important Influence On My Life, Even Though I Didn't Visit Him Often, Since He Lived About Three Miles Out Of Town And He Died When I Was Six. He Was Remarkably Curious About The World, And He Read Lots Of Books.
Book
Grandfather
Important
Being A Professional Philosopher Is, I Would Say, Feeling Natural To Think About Small And Great Problems. It Is The Only Pleasure.
Thinking
Feelings
Philosopher
And So I Fell Devoutly Asleep And Slept A Long Time, Because Young People Seem To Need Sleep More Than The Old, Who Have Already Slept So Much And Are Preparing To Sleep For All Eternity.
Sleep
Long
People
You Always Want Someone To Hate In Order To Feel Justified In Your Own Misery. Hatred Is The True Primordial Passion. It Is Love That's Abnormal. That Is Why Christ Was Killed: He Spoke Against Nature. You Don't Love Someone For Your Whole Life - That Impossible Hope Is The Source Of Adultery, Matricide, Betrayal Of Friends ... But You Can Hate Someone For Your Whole Life - Provided He's Always There To Keep Your Hatred Alive. Hatred Warms The Heart.
Betrayal
Hate
Passion
To Imagine Secret Societies And Conspiracy Is A Way Not To React To The Social And Political Life. Because You Say, "we Don't Know Who They Are. We Cannot React Without Reasoning." So It Is A Way To Keep People Far From The Political Environment.
People
Political
Secret
There Are Magic Moments, Involving Great Physical Fatigue And Intense Motor Excitement, That Produce Visions Of People Known In The Past. As I Learned Later From The Delightful Little Book Of The Abbé De Bucquoy, There Are Also Visions Of Books As Yet Unwritten.
Book
Past
Magic Moments
I Started To Write [the Name Of The Rose] In March Of 1978, Moved By A Seminal Idea. I Wanted To Poison A Monk.
Writing
Names
Ideas
Every Thing Thinks, But According To Its Complexity. If This Is So, Then Stones Also Think...and This Stone Thinks Only I Stone, I Stone, I Stone. But Perhaps It Cannot Even Say I. It Thinks: Stone, Stone, Stone... God Enjoys Being All, As This Stone Enjoys Being Almost Nothing, But Since It Knows No Other Way Of Being, It Is Pleased With Its Own Way, Eternally Satisfied With Itself.
Thinking
Stones
Way
All The Blogs, Facebook, Twitter Are Made By People Who Want To Show Their Own Private Affairs At The Price Of Making Fakes, To Try To Appear Such As They Are Not, To Construct Another Personality, Which Is A Veritable Loss Of Identity.
Loss
People
Fake
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.
Writing
Remember
Poet
To Play The Trumpet, You Must Train Your Lips For A Long Time. When I Was Twelve Or Thirteen I Was A Good Player, But I Lost The Skill And Now I Play Very Badly. I Do It Every Day Even So. The Reason Is That I Want To Return To My Childhood. For Me, The Trumpet Is Evidence Of The Sort Of Young Man I Was.
Player
Men
Skills
How Beautiful Was The Spectacle Of Nature Not Yet Touched By The Often Perverse Wisdom Of Man!
Beautiful
Men
Touched
Libraries Can Take The Place Of God.
Library
American Coffee Can Be A Pale Solution Served At A Temperature Of 100oc
Coffee
Espresso
Temperature
It Is Sometimes Hard To Grasp The Difference Between Identifying With One's Own Roots, Understanding People With Other Roots, And Judging What Is Good Or Bad.
Roots
Differences
People
Entering A Novel Is Like Going On A Climb In The Mountains: You Have To Learn The Rhythms Of Respiration - Acquire The Pace. Otherwise You Stop Right Away.
Mountain
Pace
Entering
A Library's Ideal Function Is To Be A Little Bit Like A Bouquiniste's Stall, A Place For Trouvailles.
Library
Littles
Function
Until Then I Had Thought Each Book Spoke Of The Things, Human Or Divine, That Lie Outside Books. Now I Realized That Not Infrequently Books Speak Of Books: It Is As If They Spoke Among Themselves. In The Light Of This Reflection, The Library Seemed All The More Disturbing To Me. It Was Then The Place Of A Long, Centuries-old Murmuring, An Imperceptible Dialogue Between One Parchment And Another, A Living Thing, A Receptacle Of Powers Not To Be Ruled By A Human Mind, A Treausre Of Secrets Emanated By Many Minds, Surviving The Death Of Those Who Had Produced Them Or Had Been Their Conveyors.
Lying
Book
Reflection
I Always Assume That A Good Book Is More Intelligent Than Its Author. It Can Say Things That The Writer Is Not Aware Of.
Book
Intelligent
Assuming
Better Reality Than A Dream: If Something Is Real, Then It's Real And You're Not To Blame.
Dream
Real
Blame
I Believe That You Can Reach The Point Where There Is No Longer Any Difference Between Developing The Habit Of Pretending To Believe And Developing The Habit Of Believing.
Believe
Thinking
Differences
Nothing Is More Fleeting Than External Form, Which Withers And Alters Like The Flowers Of The Field At The Appearance Of Autumn.
Fall
Flower
Autumn
I Don't Want To Write A Novel Per Year. I Know That I Need A Break Of One Or Two Years. So Maybe I Invent Some New, Urgent Activity So I Don't Fall Into The Trap Of Starting A New Novel.
Fall
Writing
Years
I Returned To The Courtyard And Saw That The Sun Had Grown Weaker. Beautiful And Clear As It Had Been, The Morning (as The Day Approached The Completion Of Its First Half) Was Becoming Damp And Misty. Heavy Clouds Moved From The North And Were Invading The Top Of The Mountain, Covering It With A Light Brume. It Seemed To Be Fog, And Perhaps Fog Was Also Rising From The Ground, But At That Altitude It Was Difficult To Distinguish The Mists That Rose From Below And Those That Come Down From Above. It Was Becoming Hard To Discern The Bulk Of The More Distant Buildings.
Beautiful
Morning
Clouds
There Are Four Types: The Cretin, The Imbecile, The Stupid And The Mad. Normality Is A Balanced Mixture Of All Four.
Stupid
Mad
Four
Beauty Is Boring Because It Is Predictable.
Boring
Predictable
Jacopo Belbo Didnt Understand That He Had Had His Moment And That It Would Have To Be Enough For Him, For All His Life. Not Recognizing It, He Spent The Rest Of His Days Seeking Something Else, Until He Damned Himself.
Moments
Enough
Recognizing
The Truth Is A Young Maiden As Modest As She Is Beautiful, And Therefore She Is Always Seen Cloaked.
Beautiful
Modesty
Truth Is
When The Writer (or The Artist In General) Says He Has Worked Without Giving Any Thought To The Rules Of The Process, He Simply Means He Was Working Without Realizing He Knew The Rules.
Writing
Mean
Artist
A Dream Is A Scripture, And Many Scriptures Are Nothing But Dreams.
Dream
Atheist
Scripture
I Started To Work In Television For Three Or Four Years, In 1954. There Was One Channel Of Television, Black And White. But It Could Be Entertaining And Educational. During The Evening They Showed Important Plays, Opera Or Shakespeare's Tragedies.
Educational
Black And White
Years
There Are More Books In The World Than Hours In Which To Read Them. We Are Thus Deeply Influenced By Books We Haven't Read, That We Haven't Had The Time To Read.
Book
World
Hours
Libraries Have Always Been Humanities' Way Of Preserving Its Collective Wisdom
Wise
Humanity
Library
One Of The Problems I Have Always Discussed Is The Refusal To Distinguish Between Comment And Fact. The Newspaper Wraps Every Fact Into A Comment. It Is Impossible To Give Mere Fact Without Establishing Point Of View.
Views
Giving
Facts
For Mallarmé Naming An Object Meant Suppressing Three-quarters Of Its Poetic Pleasure (which Consists In The Joy Of Guessing Bit By Bit - "le Suggérer, Voilà Le Rêve!").
Poetry
Joy
Three
Originality And Creativity Are Nothing But The Result Of The Wise Management Of Combinations. The Creative Genius Combines More Rapidly, And With A Greater Critical Sense Of What Gets Tossed Out And What Gets Saved, The Same Material That The Failed Genius Has To Work With.
Wise
Creativity
Creative
They Say That A Cat, If It Falls From A Window And Hits Its Nose, Can Lose Its Sense Of Smell And Then, Because Cats Live By Their Ability To Smell, It Can No Longer Recognize Things. I'm A Cat That Hit Its Nose.
Fall
Cat
Smell
The Mobile Phone... Is A Tool For Those Whose Professions Require A Fast Response, Such As Doctors Or Plumbers.
Doctors
Phones
Tools
Thus We Have On Stage Two Men, Each Of Whom Knows Nothing Of What He Believes The Other Knows, And To Deceive Each Other Reciprocally Both Speak In Allusions, Each Of The Two Hoping (in Vain) That The Other Holds The Key To His Puzzle.
Believe
Men
Keys
... Luckily, Eden Is Soon Populated. The Ethical Dimension Begins When The Other Appears On The Scene.
Eden
Dimensions
Ethical
Poetry Is Not A Matter Of Feelings, It Is A Matter Of Language. It Is Language Which Creates Feelings.
Feelings
Matter
Language
But It Has Often Happened That I Have Found The Most Seductive Depictions Of Sin In The Pages Of Those Very Men Of Incorruptible Virtue Who Condemned Their Spell And Their Effects.
Men
Seductive
Pages
You Tell Me These Two Were My Parents, So Now I Know But It's A Memory That You've Given Me. I'll Remember The Photo From Now On, But Not Them.
Memories
Two
Parent
It Is Clear That When You Write A Story That Takes Place In The Past, You Try To Show What Really Happened In Those Times. But You Are Always Moved By The Suspicion That You Are Also Showing Something About Our Contemporary World.
Writing
Past
Trying
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.
Believe
Names
Giving
...we Can Only Add To The World, Where We Believe It Ends, More Parts Similar To Those We Already Know (an Expanse Made Again And Always Of Water And Land, Stars And Skies).
Stars
Believe
Sky
When You Are On The Dancefloor, There Is Nothing To Do But Dance.
Dance
Living The Same Sorrows Three Times Was A Suffering, But It Was A Suffering To Relive Even The Same Joys. The Joy Of Life Is Born From Feeling, Whether It Be Joy Or Grief, Always Of Short Duration, And Woe To Those Who Know They Will Enjoy Eternal Bliss.
Grief
Joy
Feelings
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.
Life
Witty
Powerful
Each Of Us Is Sometimes A Cretin, A Fool, A Moron, Or A Lunatic. A Normal Person Is Just A Reasonable Mix Of These Components, These Four Ideal Types.
Four
Fool
Normal
Whoever Reflects On Four Things I Would Be Better If He Were Never Born: That Which Is Above, That Which Is Below, That Which Is Before, That Which Is After.
Would Be
Four
Born
When All The Archetypes Burst Out Shamelessly, We Plumb The Depths Of Homeric Profundity. Two Clichés Make Us Laugh But A Hundred Clichés Moves Us Because We Sense Dimly That The Clichés Are Talking Among Themselves, Celebrating A Reunion. . . . Just As The Extreme Of Pain Meets Sensual Pleasure, And The Extreme Of Perversion Borders On Mystical Energy, So Too The Extreme Of Banality Allows Us To Catch A Glimpse Of The Sublime.
Laughter
Pain
Moving
Perhaps The Mission Of Those Who Love Mankind Is To Make People Laugh At The Truth, To Make Truth Laugh, Because The Only Truth Lies In Learning To Free Ourselves From Insane Passion For The Truth.
Love
Lying
Passion
We Live For Books.
Book
To Escape The Power Of The Unknown, To Prove To Yourself That You Don't Believe In It, You Accept Its Spells. Like An Avowed Atheist Who Sees The Devil At Night, You Reason: He Certainly Doesn't Exist; This Is Therefore An Illusion, Perhaps A Result Of Indigestion. But The Devil Is Sure That He Exists, And Believes In His Upside-down Theology. What, Then, Will Frighten Him? You Make The Sign Of The Cross, And He Vanishes In A Puff Of Brimstone.
Atheist
Believe
Book
Media Populism Means Appealing To People Directly Through Media. A Politician Who Can Master The Media Can Shape Political Affairs Outside Of Parliament And Even Eliminate The Mediation Of Parliament.
Mean
Media
People
Conspiracies Do Exist. Probably In This Moment In New York There Is An Economic Group Making A Conspiracy In Order To Buy Three Banks. But If They Succeed, They Are Immediately Discovered.
New York
Order
Succeed
All Of Us Were Slowly Losing That Intellectual Light That Allows You Always To Tell The Similar From The Identical, The Metaphorical From The Real.
Real
Thinking
Light
Dan Brown, Is A Character From Foucault's Pendulum! I Invented Him. He Shares My Characters' Fascinations - The World Conspiracy Of Rosicrucians, Masons, And Jesuits. The Role Of The Knights Templar. The Hermetic Secret. The Principle That Everything Is Connected. I Suspect Dan Brown Might Not Even Exist.
Character
Knights
Secret
The Good Of A Book Lies In Its Being Read.
Lying
Book
Semiotics
There Must Be A Connection Between The Lust For Power And Impotentia Coeundi. I Liked Marx, I Was Sure That He And His Jenny Had Made Love Merrily. You Can Feel It In The Easy Pace Of His Prose And In His Humor. On The Other Hand, I Remember Remarking One Day In The Corridors Of The University That If You Screwed Krupskaya All The Time, You'd End Up Writing A Lousy Book Like Materialism And Empiriocriticism.
Book
Writing
Hands
I Believe That What We Become Depends On What Our Fathers Teach Us At Odd Moments, When They Aren't Trying To Teach Us. We Are Formed By Little Scraps Of Wisdom.
Fathers Day
Dad
Believe
I Like Nicotine Because It Excites My Brain And Helps Me Work.
Brain
Helping
Help Me
Books Are Not Made To Be Believed, But To Be Subjected To Inquiry.
Book
Inquiry
Made
Beauty Has Never Been Absolute And Immutable But Has Taken On Different Aspects Depending On The Historical Period And The Country
Country
Taken
Historical
A Mystic Is A Hysteric Who Has Met Her Confessor Before Her Doctor.
Doctors
Mets
Mystic
But Italy Is Not An Intellectual Country. On The Subway In Tokyo Everybody Reads. In Italy, They Don't. Don't Evaluate Italy From The Fact That It Produced Raphael And Michelangelo.
Country
Intellectual
Subway
The Author Should Die Once He Has Finished Writing. So As Not To Trouble The Path Of The Text.
Writing
Path
Trouble
You Can Be Obsessed By Remorse All Your Life, Not Because You Chose The Wrong Thing- You Can Always Repent, Atone : But Because You Never Had The Chance To Prove To Yourself That You Would Have Chosen The Right Thing.
Book
Chance
Language
I Am Firmly Of The Opinion That The Macintosh Is Catholic And That Dos Is Protestant. Indeed, The Macintosh Is Counterreformist And Has Been Influenced By The Methodical Path Of The Jesuits.... It Is Catechistic: The Essence Of Revelation Is Dealt With Via Simple Formulae And Sumptuous Icons. Everyone Has A Right To Salvation. Dos Is Protestant, Or Even Calvinistic. It Allows Free Interpretation Of Scripture, Demands Difficult Personal Decisions, Imposes A Subtle Hermeneutics Upon The User, And Takes For Granted The Idea That All Can Reach Salvation.
Simple
Icons
Essence
Daytime Sleep Is Like The Sin Of The Flesh; The More You Have The More You Want, And Yet You Feel Unhappy, Sated And Unsated At The Same Time.
Sleep
Unhappy
Flesh
Sometimes You Say Things With A Smile With The Precise Intention Of Making It Clear That You Are Not Being Serious, And Are Only Kidding. If I Salute A Friend With A Smile And Say, "how Are You, You Old Scoundrel!" Clearly I Don't Really Mean He's A Scoundrel.
Mean
Serious
Sometimes
Only An Unhinged Movie Survives As A Disconnected Series Of Images, Of Peaks, Of Visual Icebergs. It Should Display Not One Central Idea But Many. It Should Not Reveal A Coherent Philosophy Of Composition. It Must Live On, And Because Of, Its Glorious Ricketiness.
Philosophy
Ideas
Should
I Seal That Which Was Not To Be Said In The Tomb That I Become.
Said
Tombs
Seals
[in My Writing] I Know That I Have Made A Caricature Out Of [others' Academic] Theories [but] I Think That Caricatures Are Frequently Good Portraits.
Writing
Thinking
Portraits
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.
Done
Territory
Century
If Western Culture Is Shown To Be Rich It Is Because, Even Before The Enlightenment, It Has Tried To "dissolve" Harmful Simplifications Through Inquiry And The Critical Mind.
Mind
Enlightenment
Western Culture
But Laughter Is Weakness, Corruption, The Foolishness Of Our Flesh.
Laughter
Weakness
Flesh
Every Time That I Write A Novel I Am Convinced For At Least Two Years That It Is The Last One, Because A Novel Is Like A Child. It Takes Two Years After Its Birth. You Have To Take Care Of It. It Starts Walking, And Then Speaking.
Children
Writing
Years
We Know That Sensory Phenomena Are Transcribed In The Photographic Emulsion In Such A Way That Even If There Is A Causal Link With The Real Phenomena, The Graphic Images Can Be Considered As Wholly Arbitrary With Respect To These Phenomena.
Real
Arbitrary
Links
Not Long Ago, If You Wanted To Seize Political Power In A Country You Had Merely To Control The Army And The Police. Today It Is Only In The Most Backward Countries That Fascist Generals, In Carrying Out A Coup D'état, Still Use Tanks. If A Country Has Reached A High Degree Of Industrialization The Whole Scene Changes.... Today A Country Belongs To The Person Who Controls Communications.
Country
Communication
Army
The West Has Decided To Channel Money And Effort Into Studying Other Customs And Practices, But No One Has Really Given Other People The Chance To Study Western Customs And Practices, Except At Schools Maintained By White Expatriates, Or By Allowing The Rich From Other Cultures To Study In Oxford Or Paris. What Happens Then Is That They Return Home To Organise Fundamentalist Movements, Because They Feel Solidarity With Those Of Their Compatriots Who Lack The Opportunity For Such Education.
Home
School
Opportunity
The Cultivated Person's First Duty Is To Be Always Prepared To Rewrite The Encyclopedia.
Knowledge
Intelligent
People
When Your True Enemies Are Too Strong, You Have To Choose Weaker Enemies.
Strong
Enemy
A Writer Writes For Writers, A Non-writer Writes For His Next-door Neighbor Or For The Manager Of The Local Bank Branch, And He Fears (often Mistakenly) That They Would Not Understand Or, In Any Case, Would Not Forgive His Boldness.
Writing
Doors
Forgiving
As A Scholar I Am Interested In The Philosophy Of Language, Semiotics, Call It What You Want, And One Of The Main Features Of The Human Language Is The Possibility Of Lying.
Philosophy
Lying
Want
The More Things You Know, Or Pretend To Know, The More Powerful You Are. It Doesn't Matter If The Things Are True. What Counts, Remember, Is To Possess A Secret.
Powerful
Secret
Matter
This, In Fact, Is The Power Of The Imagination, Which, Combining The Memory Of Gold With That Of The Mountain, Can Compose The Idea Of A Golden Mountain.
Memories
Ideas
Imagination
Fear Prophets And Those Prepared To Die For The Truth, For As A Rule They Make Many Others Die With Them, Often Before Them, At Times Instead Of Them.
Fear
Humility
Religion
Not Bad, Not Bad At All," Diotallevi Said. "to Arrive At The Truth Through The Painstaking Reconstruction Of A False Text.
Pendulums
Said
Reconstruction
The Hand Of God Creates; It Does Not Conceal.
Hands
Doe
Hands Of God
The Order That Our Mind Imagines Is Like A Net, Or Like A Ladder, Built To Attain Something. But Afterward You Must Throw The Ladder Away, Because You Discover That, Even If It Was Useful, It Was Meaningless.
Order
Mind
Ladders
Reflecting On These Complex Relationships Between Reader And Story, Fiction And Life, Can Constitute A Form Of Therapy Against The Sleep Of Reason, Which Generates Monsters.
Sleep
Monsters
Fiction
Absence Is To Love As Wind Is To Fire: It Extinguishes The Little Flame, It Fans The Big.
Love
Inspirational
Relationship
We Stopped To Browse In The Cases, And Now That William - With His New Glasses On His Nose - Could Linger And Read The Books, At Every Title He Discovered He Let Out Exclamations Of Happiness, Either Because He Knew The Work, Or Because He Had Been Seeking It For A Long Time, Or Finally Because He Had Never Heard It Mentioned And Was Highly Excited And Titillated. In Short, For Him Every Book Was Like A Fabulous Animal That He Was Meeting In A Strange Land.
Book
Animal
Glasses
In The United States There's A Puritan Ethic And A Mythology Of Success. He Who Is Successful Is Good. In Latin Countries, In Catholic Countries, A Successful Person Is A Sinner.
Country
Latin
Successful
I Believe All Sin, Love, Glory Are This: When You Slide Down The Knotted Sheets, Escaping From Gestapo Headquarters, And She Hugs You, There, Suspended, And She Whispers That She's Always Dreamed Of You. The Rest Is Just Sex, Copulation, The Perpetuation Of The Vile Species.
Sex
Believe
Escaping
Conspiracies And All The Theories Of Conspiracy Are A Part Of The Canon Of Fakes. And I'm Involved, In All Of My Writings, The Theoretical Ones As Well As The Novels, With The Production Of Fakes.
Writing
Fake
Conspiracy
Rem Tene, Verba Sequentur: Grasp The Subject, And The Words Will Follow. This, I Believe, Is The Opposite Of What Happens With Poetry, Which Is More A Case Of Verba Tene, Res Sequenter: Grasp The Words, And The Subject Will Follow.
Believe
Opposites
Cases
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.
Two
Creative
Secret
I Was In A Maze. No Matter Which Way I Turned, It Was The Wrong Way.
Mazes
Matter
Way
We Like Lists Because We Don't Want To Die.
Want
Lists
Wanting To Die
It Was Awkward, Revisiting A World You Have Never Seen Before: Like Coming Home, After A Long Journey, To Someone Else’s House.
Home
Journey
Long
I'm Always Fascinated By Losers. Also, In My "foucault's Pendulum," The Main Characters, Who Are In A Way Losers, They Are More Interesting Than The Winners.
Character
Interesting
Way
You’ll Come Back To Me . . . It’s Written In The Stars, You See, You’ll Come Back. You’ll Come Back, It’s A Fact That I Am Strong Because I Do Believe In You.
Strong
Stars
Believe
Nothing Gives A Fearful Man More Courage Than Another's Fear.
Courage
Fear
Men
A Monk Should Surely Love His Books With Humility, Wishing Their Good And Not The Glory Of His Own Curiosity; But What The Temptation Of Adultery Is For Laymen And The Yearning For Riches Is For Secular Ecclesiastics, The Seduction Of Knowledge Is For Monks.
Book
Humility
Temptation
We Are Never Racist Against Somebody Who Is Very Far Away. I Don't Know Any Racism Against The Eskimos. To Have A Racist Feeling, There Must Be An Other Who Is Slightly Different From Us - But Is Living Close To Us.
Racism
Feelings
Racist
In Short, Roberto Privately Concluded, If You Would Avoid Wars, Never Make Treaties Of Peace.
Peace
War
Treaties
The Only Truth Lies In Learning To Free Ourselves From Insane Passion For The Truth.
Lying
Passion
Insane
I Seem To Know All The Cliches, But Not How To Put Them Together In A Believable Way. Or Else These Stories Are Terrible And Grandiose Precisely Because All The Cliches Intertwine In An Unrealistic Way And You Can't Disentangle Them. But When You Actually Live A Cliche, It Feels Brand New, And You Are Unashamed.
Together
Stories
Way
My Collection Of Rare Books Concerns Only Books That Don't Tell The Truth.
Book
Telling The Truth
Concern
I Have To Admit That I Only Read War And Peace When I Was 40. But I Knew The Basics Before Then.
War
Basics
Man's Principle Trait Is A Readiness To Believe Anything. Otherwise, How Could The Church Have Survived For Almost Two Thousand Years In The Absense Of Universal Gullibility?
Believe
Men
Years
To Read A Paper Book Is Another Experience: You Can Do It On A Ship, On The Branch Of A Tree, On Your Bed, Even If There Is A Blackout.
Book
Tree
Paper
Political Satire Is A Serious Thing. In Democratic Newspapers Throughout The World There Are Daily Cartoons That Often Are Not Even Funny, As Is The Case Especially In Many English-language Newspapers. Instead, They Contain A Political Message, And The Artist Takes Full Responsibility.
Responsibility
Artist
Political
I Love The Smell Of Book Ink In The Morning.
Good Morning
Book
Smell
The Photograph [of Che Guevara], For A Civilization Now Accustomed To Thinking In Images, Was Not The Description Of A Single Event... It Was An Argument.
Thinking
Civilization
Events
The Comic Is The Perception Of The Opposite; Humor Is The Feeling Of It.
Opposites
Feelings
Perception
We Have A Limit, A Very Discouraging, Humiliating Limit: Death.
Limits
Discouraging
Humiliating
What Did I Really Think Fifteen Years Ago? A Nonbeliever, I Felt Guilty In The Midst Of All Those Believers. And Since It Seemed To Me That They Were In The Right, I Decided To Believe, As You Might Decide To Take An Aspirin: It Can't Hurt And You Might Get Better.
Hurt
Believe
Thinking
Well, Diotallevi And I Are Planning A Reform In Higher Education. A School Of Comparative Irrelevance, Where Useless Or Impossibe Courses Are Given. The School's Aim Is To Turn Out Scholars Capable Of Endlessly Increasing The Number Of Unnecessary Subjects.
School
Irrelevance
Numbers
I Was A Fervent Catholic, And I Belonged To The National Organizations, Even Becoming One Of The National Leaders, Until The Age Of 21, 22.
Becoming One
Organization
Leader
Certainly, Light Fiction Exists And Encompasses Mysteries Or Second-class Romance Novels, Books That Are Read On The Beach, Whose Only Aim Is To Entertain. These Books Are Not Concerned With Style Or Creativity - Instead They Are Successful Because They Are Repetitive And Follow A Template That Readers Enjoy.
Beach
Book
Creativity
To Read Fiction Means To Play A Game By Which We Give Sense To The Immensity Of Things That Happened, Are Happening, Or Will Happen In The Actual World. By Reading Narrative, We Escape The Anxiety That Attacks Us When We Try To Say Something True About The World. This Is The Consoling Function Of Narrative — The Reason People Tell Stories, And Have Told Stories From The Beginning Of Time.
Reading
Mean
Games
Is It Worth It To Be Born If You Cannot Remember It Later? And, Technically Speaking, Had I Ever Been Born? Other People, Of Course, Said That I Was. As Far As I Know, I Was Born In Late April, At Sixty Years Of Age, In A Hospital Room.
Life
Years
People
There Is Only One Thing That You Write For Yourself, And That Is A Shopping List.
Writing
Shopping
Lists
Captain Cook Discovered Australia Looking For The Terra Incognita. Christopher Columbus Thought He Was Finding India But Discovered America. History Is Full Of Events That Happened Because Of An Imaginary Tale.
America
Australia
Captains
Trending Author
Charles A. Beard
Bradley Cooper
Brad Paisley
Tallulah Bankhead
Jack Layton
Ellie Goulding
Category
Information