It’s the job of intellectuals and writers to cast doubt on perfection. Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators, and totalitarian ideas.
It’s the job of intellectuals and writers to cast doubt on perfection. Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators, and totalitarian ideas.
Like a blazing comet, I’ve traversed infinite nights, interstellar spaces of the imagination, voluptuousness and fear.
I prefer insomnia to anaesthesia.
The salt of any interesting civilization is mixture.
Doubts are like stains on a shirt. I like shirts with stains, because when I’m given a shirt that’s too clean, one that’s completely white, I immediately start having doubts.
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.
Fifty years after half a million gypsies were exterminated in the Second World War – thousands of them in Auschwitz – we’re again preparing the mass killing of this minority.
I claim the right to take a stand once in a while.
I don’t go for people who lead full and satisfying lives.
I don’t have any doubts either about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Perhaps some more should be added to the list, but I don’t have the slightest doubt about human rights.
I don’t know whether these people are going to find themselves, but as they live their lives they have no choice but to face up to the image others have of them. They’re forced to look at themselves in a mirror, and they often manage to glimpse something of themselves.
I don’t want to promote my own image either. I don’t like going on television or mixing in literary circles.
I live quietly at home among my family and friends.
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.
I was born in the Second World War during the Nazi invasion of my country.
I’ve always been drawn to tormented people full of contradictions.
In a novel, my feelings and sense of outrage can find a broader means of expression which would be more symbolic and applicable to many European countries.
It’s the job of intellectuals and writers to cast doubt on perfection.
It’s very useful when politicians have doubts because there are so many choices to be made in the world.
Literature for me isn’t a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.
Literature is my life of course, but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view, I like being a teacher.
My job is to look at what politics is doing, not be a politician myself.
No, I’m happy to go on living the life I’ve chosen. I’m a university teacher and I like my job.
People with lots of doubts sometimes find life more oppressive and exhausting than others, but they’re more energetic – they aren’t robots.
Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.
The most important basis of any novel is wanting to be someone else, and this means creating a character.
The Most Important, Means There are some fundamental values it’s impossible to be wrong about.
We all want to be someone else but without ceasing to be ourselves. I think it’s very important to defend this idea in real life too.
There are some fundamental values it’s impossible to be wrong about.
When you have a foreign invasion – in this case by the Indonesian army – writers, intellectuals, newspapers and magazines are the first targets of repression.
(sk)
Imperfect !!
Incomplete !!
Impermanent !!