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.

I claim the right to take a stand once in a while.

Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.

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

Rather than regret for what I have written, I feel regret for what I shall never be able to read.

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.

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.