Umberto Eco Quotes

Writing is the basis of all, because creating something that didn't even exist before is like taking an empty canvass. It is a wonderful thing to make something out of nothing. You've got an empty page, you've got an idea, and then you start typing and that is the most thrilling thing of all. And then if it becomes a movie or something else that's a plus, but the original writing of it is what's very exciting.

I say to my pupils, 'You can pitch me any thing you've got, but tell me why you're the only person who can write it in the world. Keep digging.'

Agents and publishers are always looking for something 'different,' a fresh viewpoint and a new voice, not just re-hashed versions of stuff that's gone before.

Artists should never look at pictures, but should stutter in a language of their own.

I'm a very creative person, and the best part about creation is creating. So I always love to come up with new things, new ideas, new thoughts. I cherish things like that.

My advice to would-be young authors is to read a lot, write a lot, and not worry about creating a finished product. Keeping a journal is not a bad idea either.

My ideas and creativity are the sources of inspiration for me.

Jean Renoir once suggested that most true creators have only one idea and spend their lives reworking it, but then very rapidly he added that most people don't have any ideas at all, so one idea is pretty amazing.

Since I was a kid, I could make up stories, I could make up funny jokes and I could always do it. When I'm walking down the street or having dinner, ideas will hit me, and I write them down on matchbooks or napkins and throw them in the draw.

The difficulty in the way of writing a children's play is that Barrie was born too soon. Many people must have felt the same about Shakespeare. We who came later have no chance. What fun to have been Adam, and to have had the whole world of plots and jokes and stories at one's disposal.

What a writer has to do is write what hasn't been written before or beat dead men at what they have done.

Everyone wants a definition of creativity that makes what they do into something special and what everyone else does into nothing special. But the fact is, we're all creative. We come up with weird and interesting ideas all the time. The biggest difference between 'creators' isn't their imagination - it's how hard they work. Ideas are easy. Doing stuff is hard.

You've got to concentrate on the business of entertaining and writing songs. Always think different from the next person. Don't ever do a song as you heard somebody else do it.

Words are the instruments you play to the song of your ideas, you're just playing covers.

Copying isn’t particularly creative work. Being inspired by someone else’s idea to produce something new and different IS creative work.

There's no really other way to learn writing than by writing. So accelerate that as much as you can. The more you write, the better you'll get. What also helps, though, is walking away from broken stuff. Not everything's going to work. Killing two years of your life trying to resuscitate a dying novel, I don't know. Why not just write a different one? You'll have more ideas. You can't help having ideas.

A director is a man, therefore he has ideas; he is also an artist, therefore he has imagination. Whether they are good or bad, it seems to me that I have an abundance of stories to tell. And the things I see, the things that happen to me, continually renew the supply.

I really strive to bring something new to each book. I don't want to write the same book over and over again.

If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.

I write everything I do. On the average, it takes you about sixty months from the first molecule of an idea to it being in front of an audience. I'm actually somebody that creates their own stuff.

If the novelist isn't surprised by where his book ends up, he or she probably hasn't written anything worth remembering.

The seed of an idea laying dormant in an old sketchbook is fed the missing ingredient from a new experience. Trying to share some of these experiences, some of the wonders, is one of the reasons why I do books.

I would rather read a poorly structured story that has fresh ideas than a tightly structured one with cliches.

My books always begin with a sentence and an image - not necessarily connected.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.