In the Middle Ages, cathedrals and convents burned like tinder; imagining a medieval story without a fire is like imagining a World War II movie in the Pacific without a fighter plane shot down in flames.
Tags: writing, obviousness, middle-ages, imagination, fire, essentials

Other Quotes by "Umberto Eco"

When I went from being an academic to being a member of the community of writers some of my former colleagues did look on me with a certain resentment.
Tags: look, community, colleagues, me
Translation is the art of failure.
Tags: failure, art
I started to work in television for three or four years, in 1954. There was one channel of television, black and white. But it could be entertaining and educational. During the evening they showed important plays, opera or Shakespeare's tragedies.
Tags: black, evening, black-and-white, work
To play the trumpet, you must train your lips for a long time. When I was twelve or thirteen I was a good player, but I lost the skill and now I play very badly. I do it every day even so. The reason is that I want to return to my childhood. For me, the trumpet is evidence of the sort of young man I was.
Tags: you, man, me, good
Semiotics is a general theory of all existing languages... all forms of communication - visual, tactile, and so on... There is general semiotics, which is a philosophical approach to this field, and then there are many specific semiotics.
Tags: approach, which, general, communication
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