After so many years even the fire of passion dies, and with it what was believed the light of the truth. Who of us is able to say now whether Hector or Achilles was right,...

Fear prophets, Adso, 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.

Translation is the art of failure.

A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection — not an invitation for hypnosis.

L’essere umano è davvero una creatura straordinaria. Ha scoperto il fuoco, edificato città, scritto magnifiche poesie, dato interpretazioni del mondo, inventato mitologie etc… Ma allo stesso tempo non ha smesso di fare la guerra ai...

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...

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...

the book is like the spoon, scissors, the hammer, the wheel. once invented, it cannot be improved

I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.

In the years when I discoverd the Abbé Vallet volume, there was a widespread conviction that one should write only out of a commitment to the present, in order to change the world. Now, after...

315Beauty 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 print does not always have the same shape as the body that impressed it, and it doesn’t always derive from the pressure of a body. At times it reproduces the impression a body has...

There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with...

Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it...

In that face, deformed by hatred of philosophy, I saw for the first time the portrait of the Antichrist, who does not come from the tribe of Judas, as his heralds have it, or from...

But what use is the unicorn to you if your intellect doesn’t believe in it?

Progresele culturale, care sunt evidente şi se extind la categorii sociale în mod tradiţional excluse, pot continua. Dar ăn acelaşi timp există mai multă prostie. Faptul că ţăranii de odinioară tăceau nu însemna că erau...

Thus I rediscovered what writers have always known (and have told us again and again): books always speak of other books, and every story tells a story that has already been told.

All the stories I would like to write persecute me. When I am in my chamber, it seems as if they are all around me, like little devils, and while one tugs at my ear,...

Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another’s fear.

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.

The ideology of this America wants to establish reassurance through Imitation. But profit defeats ideology, because the consumers want to be thrilled not only by the guarantee of the Good but also by the shudder...

I discovered … that a novel has nothing to do with words in the first instance. Writing a novel is a cosmological matter, like the story told by Genesis (we all have to choose our...

The beauty of the universe consists not only of unity in variety, but also of variety in unity.

To emend one’s thinking constantly is a desirable practice, and one I often engage in–sometimes to the point of being almost schizophrenic. But there are cases where one should not parade changes just to prove...

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in their turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them,...

I did not know then what Brother William was seeking, and to tell the truth, I still do not know today, and I presume he himself did not know, moved as he was solely by...

National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same.

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...

The Internet gives us everything and forces us to filter it not by the workings of culture, but with our own brains. This risks creating six billion separate encyclopedias, which would prevent any common understanding...

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...

But the purpose of a story is to teach and to please at once, and what it teaches is how to recognize the snares of the world.

And what would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear, perhaps the most foresighted, the most loving of the divine gifts?

The monkish vows keep us far from that sink of vice that is the female body, but often they bring us close to other errors. Can I finally hide from myself the fact that even...

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.

But this lump does not absolve me, because I got it through heedlessness, not though courage. I run my tongue over my lip and what do I do? I write. But bad literature brings no...

And don’t succumb too much to the spell of these cases. I have seen many other fragments of the cross, in other churches. If all were genuine, our Lord’s torment could not have been on...

The people of God cannot be changed until the outcasts are restored to its body.

Better reality than a dream: if something is real, then it’s real and you’re not to blame.

At t de mare e puterea adevărului care, precum binele, se răsp ndește de la sine.

El diablo no es el príncipe de la materia, el diablo es la arrogancia del espíritu, la fe sin sonrisa, la verdad jamás tocada por la duda.

The fine thing about pacts with the devil is that when you sign them you are well aware of their conditions. Otherwise, why would you be recompensed with hell?

Kada policijos informatorius tampa išties patikimas? Kai atskleidžia sąmokslą. Tad reikia surengti sąmokslą, apie kurį galėtų pranešti.

Priešas turi būti atpažįstamas ir baisus, jis turi būti tavo namuose arba prie durų slenksčio. Štai kodėl žydai. Mums juos atsiuntė Dievo apvaizda, tad, dėl Dievo, pasinaudokime jais ir melskimės, kad visada būtų žydų, kurių...

In the Middle Ages, cathendrals and convents burned like tinder; imagining a medieval story without a fire is like imagining a World War II movie in the Pacific without a fighter plane shot down in...

A te închipui un element necesar în ordinea universului echivalează, pentru noi, oamenii cu lecturi serioase, cu ceea ce e superstiția pentru analfabeți. Nu se schimbă lumea cu ideile. Persoanele cu puține idei sunt mai...

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.

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

What model reader did I want as i was writing? An accomplice, to be sure, one who would play my game.

Yes, I know, it’s not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.