“I searched for peace everywhere and found it in only one place – in the corner, with a book.” A few quotes from books whose author has left us.
- There is a suspicion that I forgot something. It’s as if something is stuffed into the folds of troublesomeness, as they put money or a piece of paper with an address into the smallest pocket of jeans and only later realize that this little thing was decisive, the only, the main one.
- You can be educated by reading ten different books and by reading the same book ten times. Only those who do not read books need to worry. But they are the only ones who are completely calm.
- Fear, Adson, the prophets and those who are disposed to give their lives for the truth. Usually they, along with their own, give the lives of many others. Sometimes even before you give yours. And sometimes – instead of giving yours.
- That’s how we do it. We hate strangers to the extreme, but we hate our own beyond all measure. If a stranger helps us harm our own, then God grant him all health.
The unconscious bites its overseers too
- Of course, I know that it is not necessary to say “Negro”. That now instead of “the blind” they say “the visually impaired”. And yet, the black man did not become white, and the blind man, no matter how damn he saw, still does not see.
- When people stop believing in God, Chesterton said, it’s not that they don’t believe in anything – quite the contrary, they begin to believe in everything. Even in the integrity of the media.
- Knowledge is not a coin, which is not in the least harmful by any circulation, even the most lawless; rather, it resembles a most precious dress, which frays both from wearing and from being shown.
- “He writes that a doctor cured a sick person who told him to make him laugh. Why was it necessary to heal him if the Lord decreed that his earthly day was drawing to a close?” “I don’t think that he cured the patient of the disease. Rather taught him to laugh at the disease.
- Wise is not the one who rejects, but the wise one who selects and combines flashes of light, no matter where they come from …
- However, reflections on tomorrow and just everyday reflections tell us: if someone attacks you with a knife, you certainly have the right to respond with a fist. But if you are Superman and you know that your slap will throw the enemy to the moon, this collision will displace our satellite from its orbit, the gravitational balance will be disturbed, Mars will crash into Mercury and so on – think for a moment. Including over the fact that, perhaps, the death of the solar system is exactly what the attacker wanted. And that you shouldn’t let him.
We wanted too much, but now we can’t stop wanting
- The tragedy of the suicide is that usually, jumping out of the window and flying between the seventh and sixth floors, he cries out with all his heart: “Oh, if I could beat it!” But this is fluff. Nobody can win. Bam. And my Abu is merciful, he allows a reverse move, I will still restore my disappeared text, if only I do not drag too much and immediately click on the restore key. What happiness. Exclusively because it is always in our power to remember – now we know how to forget.
- I wrote the novel because I felt like it. I think this is reason enough to sit down and start talking. Man from birth is a storytelling animal. I started writing in March 1978. I wanted to poison the monk. I think that every novel is born from such thoughts.
- The task is reduced to the creation of the world. The words will come by themselves. I had to know by sight all the inhabitants of the monastery, even those who are not shown in the book. There is no need for the reader to get acquainted with them, but for me it is necessary.
- The Middle Ages is our childhood, to which we must constantly return, return for anamnesis … The historical novel must do this too: not only to trace in the past the causes of what happened in the future, but also to outline the paths along which the causes slowly moved towards their consequences .
- Where did I read that in the final moment, when life, the surface on the surface, is saturated with experience, everything becomes known to you, both mystery and power and glory, and why you were born, and why you die, and how everything could have happened completely differently? You are wise. But the highest wisdom, in this moment, is to know that you will know everything in the world too late. Everything becomes clear when there is nothing to understand.
The quotes are taken from the books by Umbreto Eco: “The Name of the Rose” (Symposium, 2009), “Foucault’s Pendulum” (Corpus, 2015), “Zero Number” (Corpus, 2015), “The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana” (Symposium, 2008), ” Baudolino” (Symposium, 2007), “Cartons of Minerva. Notes on matchboxes” (Сoprus, 2015), “Don’t find yourself getting rid of books” (Symposium, 2010).