Eco Quotes

“The desert and the ocean are realms of desolation on the surface.

The desert is a place of bones, where the innards are turned out, to desiccate into dust.

The ocean is a place of skin, rich outer membranes hiding thick juicy insides, laden with the soup of being.

Inside out and outside in. These are worlds of things that implode or explode, and the only catalyst that determines the direction of eco-movement is the balance of water.

Both worlds are deceptive, dangerous. Both, seething with hidden life.

The only veil that stands between perception of what is underneath the desolate surface is your courage.

Dare to breach the surface and sink.”
― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

“You cannot change the world with ideas. People with few ideas are less likely to make mistakes; they follow what everyone else does and are no trouble to anyone; they're successful, make money, find good jobs, enter politics, receive honours; they become famous writers, academics, journalists. Can anyone who is so good at looking after their own interests really be stupid? I'm the stupid one, the one who wanted to go tilting at windmills.”
― Umberto Eco , The Prague Cemetery

“Aunque ya han aparecido plásticos realmente biodegradables derivados de azúcares vegetales naturales, así como un poliéster igualmente biodegradable hecho a base de bacterias, las probabilidades de que estos reemplacen a los originales derivados del petróleo no son muchas.”
― Alan Weisman, The World Without Us

“If you are already solving your problem with the equipment you have - a pencil, say- why solve it with something more expensive and more damaging? If you don't have a problem, why pay for a solution? If you love the freedom and elegance of simple toons, why encumber yourself with something complicated?
And yet, if we are ever again going to have a world fit and pleasant for little children, we are surely going to have to draw the line where it is not easily drawn. We are going to have to learn to give up things that we have learned (in only a few years, after all) to 'need'.”
― Wendell Berry, Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer

“I am not an optimist; I am afraid that I won't live long enough to escape my bondage to the machines.”
― Wendell Berry, Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer

“Eco listens with interest to the story of a lost manuscript for which people are being killed. He sees a man walk past holding a bouquet of roses. His mind wanders for a second, and a vision of a poisoned monk flashes through it.”
― Laurent Binet, La Septième Fonction du langage

“Open text is one of a pair of terms popularized by Eco to refer to kinds of interpretative interactions between text and reader. An open text, unlike a closed one such as a work of popular fiction, is not aimed at a specific reader in a specific social context. It is also open in that its theme, structure and language are more complex, less explicit, more "open-ended": what other critics as Barthes in reception theory would call "Indeterminate". The open text constructs the model of its own reader as part of its structural strategy.”
― Katie Wales

“Dios nos mandó la señal de que el hombre ya no vive en la tierra como en su propia casa, sino que es un huésped. Somos unos invitados de ella.”
― Svetlana Alexievich, Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

“Text is like a musical score. It is true that Anna Karenina commits suicide in the same sense that is true that Beethoven's Fifth Symphony is in C minor (and not in F major, like the Sixth) and begins with G,G,G,E-flat.”
― Umberto Eco, On Literature