Umberto Eco Quotes

Novelists do not swing on the same pendulums as critics.

I suspect there are two kinds of novelists. Those who have a point of view and have something to say and then write a novel in order to say that thing, and those of us who write the book in order to find out what we think about that thing.

There isn't any distinction between a reader and a writer - reading is so much a part of it.

Academics love to make theories about a body of work, but each book consumes the writer and is the sum of his or her world.

I wouldn't like to be a character in one of my books!

I began to ask two questions while I was reading a book that excited me: not only what was going to happen next, but how is this done? How is it that these words on the page make me feel the way I'm feeling? This is the line of inquiry that I think happens in a child's mind, without him even knowing he has aspirations as a writer.

I love 'Memory Keeper's Daughter,' but in some ways I think 'The Lake of Dreams' is a stronger book. I was able to tell the story I wanted to tell. That's all you can ever do as a writer. From there on you have no control over it.

I have no favourite genre or style but treat each novel with the same care, imagination and craftsmanship. It's as difficult to write a crime or a children's novel with a touch of style and grace as it is a literary novel.

Of all fatiguing, futile, empty trades, the worst, I suppose, is writing about writing.

In general, when I'm writing, I concentrate on the story itself, and I leave it to other people, such as agents and publishers, to work out who it's for.

I don't think any novelist should be concerned with literature.

I think everything we do, on one level or another, as writers, most of our writing is informed by our world view.

I find inspiration in many places. Sometimes music gives me the kernel of a story. Sometimes it's dissatisfaction with the plot of a movie or a book that gets me thinking. Sometimes it's love of a movie or book.

I have heard of novels started in the middle, at the end, written in patches to be joined together later, but I have never felt the slightest desire to do this.

Becoming an author changes your attitude too. Once you see where books come from, and how they're made, they never seem quite as sacred again.

Many fiction writers write for the critics or for themselves; they forget the common reader. I never do. I don't think journalism clashes with my fiction; on the contrary, it helps enormously.

Interpreter of Maladies is the title of one of the stories in the book. And the phrase itself was something I thought of before I even wrote that story.

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

I don't really think in terms of making something that is going to be bought everywhere, because I don't read those things. My writing is a process in which I try my best to make good sentences and a sequence of events that is compelling and believable.

Novelists should be like scientists, dissecting the cadaver.

What does Sinclair know about anything? He's just a writer.

I don't think that books are wondrous, magical things that come from nowhere. It's important that a book has clues about where and how it was written.

We're not just writers; we're readers probably more than anything else. That's how you learn how to write and how you learn to appreciate good writing: by reading.

I absolutely wasn't going to write a book if it was just going to be about punk.

In order to be a living, breathing thing, a novel has to be failed in some kind of way. Or at least that's how I keep writing them.