Umberto Eco Quotes

A writer either speaks to adults and bores kids, or speaks to kids and upsets adults.

In the big picture I write for an audience of people I've never met. By the final draft I'm looking for anything in the prose that's prospectively boring to strangers.

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

Your intention for a book is never the same as the reception.

What I write is not for little girls.

One of the problems of writing is that anyone who commits themselves to that process has to believe that they're good.

I mean, I don't write for kids.

You write not for children but for yourself. And if by good fortune children enjoy what you enjoy, why then you are a writer of children's books.

I guess I think I'm writing for people who are smarter than I am, because then I'll be doing something that's worth their time. I'd be very afraid to write from a position where I consciously thought I was smarter than most of my readers.

I'm not afraid of writing about sensitive subjects, but I want to be careful how I do so and I know not all readers will think I have been, of course.

I always intended to be light and open. I misjudged the American audience.

Either a writer doesn't want to talk about his work, or he talks about it more than you want.

I think writers would do better to consider that idea [to write to yourself], because you know yourself really well, and you never know your demographic fully. You only get into trouble if you try to please somebody you don't really understand.

... in nine out of ten cases the original wish to write is the wish to make oneself felt[ellipsis in source] the non-essential writer never gets past that wish.

The theater's much the most difficult kind of writing for me, the most naked kind, you're so entirely restricted.... I find myself stuck with these characters who are either sitting or standing, and they've either got to walk out of a door, or come in through a door, and that's about all they can do.

There were a few things that went into it. When you're doing something you're trying to be your audience at the same time, so if somebody tells me that this is a movie about retired opera singers, you think 'maybe I'll wait for it to come to DVD'. You're not rushing off to see it.

Not to any really influential effect, but certainly there have been comments that have surprised me. It's surprising sometimes to get particular perspectives on your work, and it's enlightening sometimes to know that non-writers and readers out there have certain assumptions about everything that I both want to keep in mind and want to forget about why I write, and about the connection between me as a private person and the stuff that I think about on the page.

I want to do a stripped-down album. That style is actually where my heart is - storytelling and just letting the voice and the lyrics talk for themselves. I still want to write the perfect song and sing it in the most honest, undressed way. But I feel like I have to gather more experiences and more layers in my voice. I have to live more to be able to tell this tale. So I'm saving my folk record. I have a feeling nobody will understand it.

There is nothing harder to estimate than a writer's time, nothing harder to keep track of. There are moments—moments of sustained creation—when his time is fairly valuable; and there are hours and hours when a writer's time isn't worth the paper he is not writing anything on.

Don't use metaphors in fantasy; your readers will take them literally. Or they may take them figuratively - but if so, they'll also take your magics and transformations figuratively. Either way, you're in trouble.

If priest is closed to forgiveness, he won't receive it, because he locked the door from the inside. And what remains is to pray for the Lord to open that door. To forgive you must be willing. But not everyone can receive or know how to receive it, or are just not willing to receive it.

I don't really have the gift of the sustained narrative that you need to write a book. I've tried a couple of times, and it just doesn't work. But I get some good passages, so what I'm going to do is just take sections out of them.

I'm not reading currently because I'm getting revisions of a novel. If I read while I'm writing I will unconsciously plagiarize and go to jail.

When you're a writer, you want to try to avoid cliches. Unfortunately, when you're writing about marriage or family, all cliches seem to apply.

This evening I begin a notebook. If anyone reads this, I trust they will forgive my overuse of "I". I can't stop it. I'm writing this.