Like a blazing comet, I've traversed infinite nights, interstellar spaces of the imagination, voluptuousness and fear. I've been a man, a woman, an old person, a little girl, I've been the crowds on the grand boulevards of the capital cities of the West, I've been the serene Buddha of the East, whose calm and wisdom we envy. I've known honor and dishonor, enthusiasm and exhaustion. ...I've been the sun and the moon, and everything because life is not enough.

In a novel, my feelings and sense of outrage can find a broader means of expression which would be more symbolic and applicable to many European countries.

Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.

Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.

No, I'm happy to go on living the life I've chosen. I'm a university teacher and I like my job.

Literature is my life of course, but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view, I like being a teacher.

Eco sees the intellectual as an organizer of culture, someone who can run a magazine or a museum. An administrator, in fact. I think this is a melancholy situation for an intellectual.