Umberto Eco

Semiotics is a general theory of all existing languages... all forms of communication - visual, tactile, and so on... There is general semiotics, which is a philosophical approach to this field, and then there are many specific semiotics.

Berlusconi is a genius in communication. Otherwise, he would never have become so rich.

I would define the poetic effect as the capacity that a text displays for continuing to generate different readings, without ever being completely consumed.

When I went from being an academic to being a member of the community of writers some of my former colleagues did look on me with a certain resentment.

We are a pluralist civilisation because we allow mosques to be built in our countries, and we are not going to stop simply because Christian missionaries are thrown into prison in Kabul. If we did so, we, too, would become Taliban.

Narrativity presumes a special taste for plot. And this taste for plot was always very present in the Anglo-Saxon countries and that explains their high quality of detective novels.

One can be a great poet and be politically stupid.

Sometimes you say things with a smile with the precise intention of making it clear that you are not being serious, and are only kidding. If I salute a friend with a smile and say, 'How are you, you old scoundrel!' clearly I don't really mean he's a scoundrel.

There is nothing more difficult to define than an aphorism.

People are tired of simple things. They want to be challenged.

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, a book contains signs that produce no concepts; therefore it is dumb.

The question of manuscript changes is very important for literary criticism, the psychology of creation and other aspects of the study of literature.