Dan Brown, is a character from Foucault's Pendulum! I invented him. He shares my characters' fascinations - the world conspiracy of Rosicrucians, Masons, and Jesuits. The role of the Knights Templar. The hermetic secret. The principle that everything is connected. I suspect Dan Brown might not even exist.

A novel is a machine for generating interpretations.

If culture did not filter, it would be inane - as inane as the formless, boundless Internet is on its own. And if we all possessed the boundless knowledge of the Web, we would be idiots! Culture is an instrument for making a hierarchical system of intellectual labor.

Not that the incredulous person doesn't believe in anything. It's just that he doesn't believe in everything.

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

Socrates ... did not write. It seems academically obvious that he perished because he did not publish!

I believe that you can reach the point where there is no longer any difference between developing the habit of pretending to believe and developing the habit of believing.