Umberto Eco Quotes

I love novels where not much 'happens' but where the interest is in the ideas and analyses of characters.

Sigmund Freud was very much a creature of his time. He did not 'invent' the unconscious.

In fact, it is Shakespeare who gives us the map of the mind. It is Shakespeare who invents Freudian Psychology. Freud finds ways of translating it into supposedly analytical vocabulary.

Between the ages of 24 and 27, I read Freud's complete works, everything that had been translated into English. It was very stimulating intellectually. But I did not accept his view of neurosis or of human nature.

For me, my preference for comedy is grounding it in the psychology of the character, and not just kind of making faces. Even when it's a crazy character, grounded comedy resonates more with people because it doesn't look like you're watching someone do vaudeville. No offense to vaudeville.

Ego, id, and superego are terms familiar to all, but for many years, Freud's psychoanalytic theory has thrived in English departments around the country as a tool for interpreting literary texts but has rarely, if ever, been discussed in science departments.

It's really a misconception to identify the writer with the main character, given that the author creates all the characters in the book. In certain ways, I'm every character.

In fiction, imaginary people become realer to us than any named celebrity glimpsed in a series of rumored events, whose causes and subtler ramifications must remain in the dark. An invented figure like Anna Karenina or Emma Bovary emerges fully into the light of understanding, which brings with it identification, sympathy and pity.

As a piece of literacy criticism, Freud's best writing is about Dostoyevsky. It's a kind of displaced literacy criticism.

I like playing characters with internal problems.

I like Beryl Bainbridge a great deal, and she is a writer who absolutely demands to be read a second, third, and fourth time. I admire her great courage in leaving so much unsaid and asking the reader to really engage her brain.

I never personalize anything because I think that can be dangerous. For me, the best way is - this may sound pretentious - but it's to breathe the character and get into the psychology of it.

My thing is, I like playing guys who have a really interesting internal monologue.

My assumption is that fundamentally the picture of the human animal, as developed by Freud, is largely right.

'Gone-Away World' was a shotgun blast, an explosion out of the box I'd put myself into writing film scripts. 'Tigerman' is shorter, tighter, more crafted.

All the great writers root their characters in true human behaviour.

My favourite book - 'The Good Soldier' by Ford Madox Ford, which I have read about 20 times - is different from my favourite author, who is Iris Murdoch. I find her books exciting and unputdownable. Her characters are so carefully studied and in-depth; I love that.

Freud has shown one thing very clearly: that we only forget our infancy by burying it in the unconscious; and that the problems of this difficult period find their solution under a disguised form in adult life.

You must understand, that for a daughter to protect her father's image is natural; Freud built a whole career around it.

Freud was one of the greatest influences on me. He made myth into psychiatry, and I've been trying to turn it back into myth again.

A thing I do with all my characters is I break them down into one of three things: mind, heart, and groin. I figure out where they come from and what they utilize most.

And yet there are some magnificent things from Freud, profound insights into the nature of man.

I think it was Freud who said that we're all arrested at a certain age. For me, it was always 13.

I think Shakespeare really got it. He was the first one to introduce psychology to villains and give them a real point of view.

Guy Gavriel Kay's 'Tigana' is, in my opinion, one of the best, if not the best fantasy novel ever written. It's beautifully written, the characters are unforgettable, the worldbuilding is exquisite.