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

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.

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

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

I was born in the Second World War during the Nazi invasion of my country.

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.

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.