Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.

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.

I live quietly at home among my family and friends.

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.

Don't mess with a wizard when he's wizarding!

It is difficult to put words to the smell of decomposing human. It is dense and cloying, sweet but not flower-sweet. Halfway between rotting fruit and rotting meat.

The compact which exists between the North and the South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell involving both parties in atrocious criminality and should be immediately annulled.

Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.

Perfect reusable components are not obtained at the first shot.

We are suffering. We have suffered. And we are not afraid to suffer in order to win our cause.

Truth without humility would be an arrogant caricature.

God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.

The execs don't care what color you are. They care about how much money you make. Hollywood is not really black or white. It's green.