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How to Travel With a Salmon & Other Essays

by Umberto Eco · 1992

Once a columnist for an Italian literary magazine, Eco now shares his acute and highly entertaining sense of the absurd in modern life in these essays about militarism, computerese, cowboy and Indian movies, art criticism… more

11 quotes ★ 3.84 (7,757) Nonfiction

Quotes from the Book

American coffee can be a pale solution served at a temperature of 100 degrees centigrade in plastic thermos cups, usually obligatory in railroad stations for purposes of genocide, whereas coffee made with an American percolator, such as you find in private houses or in humble luncheonettes, served with eggs and bacon, is delicious, fragrant, goes down like pure spring water, and afterwards causes severe palpitations, because one cup contains more caffeine than four espressos.
37
A writer writes for writers, a non-writer writes for his next-door neighbor or for the manager of the local bank branch, and he fears (often mistakenly) that they would not understand or, in any case, would not forgive his boldness.
8
To make them forget how bad human beings are, they were taught too insistently that bears are good. Instead of being told honestly what humans are and what bears are.
7
What is a saint supposed to do, if not convert wolves?
5
But if Mother Theresa went to collect all the prizes she is awarded, the death rate in Calcutta would soar.
3
For such is the fate of parody: it must never fear exaggerating. If it strikes home, it will only prefigure something that others will then do without a smile--and without a blush--in steadfast virile seriousness.
3
Will we be happier afterwards? Or will be have lost the freshness of those who are privileged to experience art as real life, where we enter after the trumps have been played, and we leave without knowing who's going to win or lose the game?
2
The taxi driver is someone who spends all day driving in city traffic (an activity that provokes either heart attack or delirium), in constant conflict with other human drivers. Consequently, he is nervous and hates every anthropomorphic creature.
1
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously three old owls on a chest of drawers were screwing the daughter of the doctor. But then the mother called them, colorless green ideas slepp furiously.
1
The mass media first convinced us that the imaginary was real, and now they are convincing us that the real is imaginary; and the more reality the TV screen shows us, the more cinematic our everyday world becomes. Until, as certain philosophers have insisted, we will think that we are alone in the world, and that everything else is the film that God or some evil spirit is projecting before our eyes.
Vrčevi za kavu koje koriste normalni ljudi - ili one dobre stare kafetijere iz kojih se miomirisno piće izlijevalo izravno u šalicu- kavi omogućuju izlazak kroz tanku cijev ili kljunčić, a gornji dio raspolaže bilo kakvim zaštitnim uređajem koji ih drži zatvorenima. U Grand Hôtelu i spavaćim kolima kava-bućkuriš stiže, naprotiv, u vrču s izrazito širokim kljunom, kao u pelikana, s krajnje pomičnim poklopcem, tako pomno izrađenim da ~ privučen nezadrživim horror vacui - automatski sklizne prema dolje tek što ste vrč neznatno nagnuli. Ta dva lukava izuma omogućuju ukletom vrču da polovicu kave odmah izlije na croissante i marmeladu te zahvaljujući klizanju poklopca. ostatak proliie po posteljini.

About Umberto Eco

We have collected 160 quotes from 9 books by Umberto Eco on BookQuoters.

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About the book

Once a columnist for an Italian literary magazine, Eco now shares his acute and highly entertaining sense of the absurd in modern life in these essays about militarism, computerese, cowboy and Indian movies, art criticism, librarians, semiotics, and much more--including himself.

Book details

First published
1992
Goodreads rating
3.84 (8k ratings)

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