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...

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.

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 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.

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...

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.

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 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 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.

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 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...

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.

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

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...

Omnia mundi creaturaquasi liber et pictura nobis estin speculum.

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.

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.

If you could decide on characters’ destinies it would be like going to the desk of a travel agent who says: “So where do you want to find the whale, in Samoa or in the...

outcast, poor, simple, excluded, uprooted from the countryside, humiliated in the cities” but we did not understand; the mystery of leprosy has continued to haunt us because we have not recognized the nature of the...

Rzeczywiście, często się zdarza, że idzie się do biblioteki, bo chce się książkę o znanym tytule, ale główną funkcją biblioteki, a przynajmniej funkcją biblioteki w moim domu i w domach wszystkich znajomych, jakich możemy odwiedzać,...

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...

Die Menschen tun das Böse nie so vollständig und begeistert, wie wenn sie es aus religiöser Überzeugung tun.

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.

When men stop believing in God, it isn’t that they then believe in nothing: they believe in everything.

Is it possible to say “It was a beautiful morning at the end of November” without feeling like Snoopy?

Two clichés make us laugh. A hundred cliches move us. For we sense dimly that the clichés are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion.(Casablanca, or, The Clichés Are Having a Ball)

The list could surely go on, and there is nothing more wonderful than a list, instrument of wondrous hypotyposis.

… luckily, Eden is soon populated. The ethical dimension begins when the other appears on the scene.

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...

How peaceful life would be without Love, Adso. How Safe. How Tranquil. And how Dull.

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...

And in that moment I experience a revelation.I realize now that it was a painful sense that the world is purposeless, the lazy fruit of a misunderstanding, but in that moment I was able to...

The light in her eyes was beyond description, yet it did not instill improper thoughts: it inspired a love tempered by awe, purifying the hearts it inflamed.