But Paris, all in all, isn't what it used o be, ever since that pencil sharpener, the Eiffel Tower, has been sticking up in the distance, visible fro… - Umberto Eco

In this world you either read or write, and writers write out of contempt for their colleagues, out of a desire to have something good to read once in a while.

In the years when I discoverd the Abbé Vallet volume, there was a widespread conviction that one should write only out of a commitment to the present, in order to change the world. Now, after ten years or more, the man of letters (restored to his loftiest dignity) can happily write out of pure love of writing.

I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.