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.

An intellectual is going to have doubts, for example, about a fundamentalist religious doctrine that admits no doubt, about an imposed political system that allows no doubt, about a perfect aesthetic that has no room for doubt.

My books are about losers, about people who've lost their way and are engaged in a search.

It's very useful when politicians have doubts because there are so many choices to be made in the world.

But I don't think I have any particular talent for prediction, because when you have three or four elements in hand, you don't have to be a genius to reach certain conclusions.

I prefer insomnia to anaesthesia.

personally I don't trust literature that soothes people's consciences.