I live quietly at home among my family and friends.

I prefer insomnia to anaesthesia.

I vividly remember the stories my grandfather told me about the carnage of the First World War, which people tend to forget was one of the worst massacres in human history.

It's the job of intellectuals and writers to cast doubt on perfection.

But democracy isn't a state of perfection. It has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.

People with lots of doubts sometimes find life more oppressive and exhausting than others, but they're more energetic - they aren't robots.

But I don't think I have any particular talent for prediction, because when you have three or four elements in hand, you don't have to be a genius to reach certain conclusions.

There are some fundamental values it's impossible to be wrong about.

Eco sees the intellectual as an organizer of culture, someone who can run a magazine or a museum. An administrator, in fact. I think this is a melancholy situation for an intellectual.

Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.

I don't want to promote my own image either. I don't like going on television or mixing in literary circles.

But the fact is, as one grows close to death, the only thing that matters is family. I hope you can see that.

Writing is lonely. Until that moment you write your first character and suddenly you have company.

This open resistance to [Parliament's] authority can only have found place among the lower and more ignorant of the people.

You may have failed, but you are not a failure. That's what you did. That's not who you are.

We do not need more division. We certainly do not need something as complex and emotional as Vietnam reduced to simple campaign rhetoric.

Loving people is the highest level of spiritual warfare that we could ever do

Hatred would have been easier. With hatred, I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.

Speaking as a writer, I'm not interested in trends, I want to write books that are honest, with characters as true to the inner world of the story as I can make them.

To camp is a mode of seduction... Behind the 'straight' public sense in which something can be taken, one has found a private zany experience of the thing.

I don't spend time wondering what might be next; I just focus on trying to savor every day.