February 19th 2016 was a sad day indeed for literature; not only did we lose Harper Lee but also Italian author, essayist, literary critic, philosopher, and semiotician Umberto Eco. He wrote one of my all time favourite novels The Name of the Rose and he will be very much missed.
To commemorate this amazing man’s life we have put together some quotes from his books and the man himself.
“We live for books.”
“Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means…”
“I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.”
“People are never so completely and enthusiastically evil as when they act out of religious conviction.”
“Absence is to love as wind is to fire: it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.”
“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.”
“I love the smell of book ink in the morning.”
Riposi in pace Umberto.