Fifty years after half a million gypsies were exterminated in the Second World War - thousands of them in Auschwitz - we're again preparing the mass killing of this minority.

But democracy isn't a state of perfection. It has to be improved, and that means constant vigilance.

I don't know whether these people are going to find themselves, but as they live their lives they have no choice but to face up to the image others have of them. They're forced to look at themselves in a mirror, and they often manage to glimpse something of themselves.

The most important basis of any novel is wanting to be someone else, and this means creating a character.

No, I'm happy to go on living the life I've chosen. I'm a university teacher and I like my job.

We all want to be someone else but without ceasing to be ourselves. I think it's very important to defend this idea in real life too.

In a novel, my feelings and sense of outrage can find a broader means of expression which would be more symbolic and applicable to many European countries.

I was born in the Second World War during the Nazi invasion of my country.

My job is to look at what politics is doing, not be a politician myself.

People with lots of doubts sometimes find life more oppressive and exhausting than others, but they're more energetic - they aren't robots.

I've always been drawn to tormented people full of contradictions.

I don't have any doubts either about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Perhaps some more should be added to the list, but I don't have the slightest doubt about human rights.

I vividly remember the stories my grandfather told me about the carnage of the First World War, which people tend to forget was one of the worst massacres in human history.

I don't go for people who lead full and satisfying lives.

But I don't think I have any particular talent for prediction, because when you have three or four elements in hand, you don't have to be a genius to reach certain conclusions.

Literature for me isn't a workaday job, but something which involves desires, dreams and fantasy.

I live quietly at home among my family and friends.

I prefer insomnia to anaesthesia.

When you have a foreign invasion - in this case by the Indonesian army - writers, intellectuals, newspapers and magazines are the first targets of repression.

Literature is my life of course, but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view, I like being a teacher.

I don't want to promote my own image either. I don't like going on television or mixing in literary circles.

The salt of any interesting civilization is mixture.

It's the job of intellectuals and writers to cast doubt on perfection.

As a writer, I've always been interested in others.

Doubts are like stains on a shirt. I like shirts with stains, because when I'm given a shirt that's too clean, one that's completely white, I immediately start having doubts.

It's very useful when politicians have doubts because there are so many choices to be made in the world.

My books are about losers, about people who've lost their way and are engaged in a search.

Eco sees the intellectual as an organizer of culture, someone who can run a magazine or a museum. An administrator, in fact. I think this is a melancholy situation for an intellectual.

Xenophobia manifests itself especially against civilizations and cultures that are weak because they lack economic resources, means of subsistence or land. So nomadic people are the first targets of this kind of aggression.

Perfection spawns doctrines, dictators and totalitarian ideas.

An intellectual is going to have doubts, for example, about a fundamentalist religious doctrine that admits no doubt, about an imposed political system that allows no doubt, about a perfect aesthetic that has no room for doubt.

I claim the right to take a stand once in a while.

Fifty years after half a million gypsies were exterminated in the Second World War - thousands of them in Auschwitz - we're again preparing the mass killing of this minority.

There are some fundamental values it's impossible to be wrong about.

Like a blazing comet, I've traversed infinite nights, interstellar spaces of the imagination, voluptuousness and fear.

Like a blazing comet Ive traversed infinite nights interstellar spaces of the imagination voluptuousness and fear.

This is the patent age of new inventions for killing bodies, and for saving souls. All propagated with the best intentions.

Just able barely to mount a horse and ride about a little in the spring of 1866, my life was threatened daily, and I was forced to go heavily armed. The whole country was then full of militia, robbing, plundering and killing.

In the First World War, there was the sudden passion of nationalism, and the killing took place because of these emotions. But the Soviet case is different, because you had systematic murder, like the Holocaust.

Towns are suffering from all these things, we should unite until we are all satisfied, man cannot be killing each other as if we were animals, as if we had no culture; that is a lack of culture.

I need to die for the killing of those people.

But when I don't smoke I scarcely feel as if I'm living. I don't feel as if I'm living unless I'm killing myself.

You are dealing with people who have taken the responsibility of killing their own because they think that they are right, they think that they are serving the interests of their people. They not going to give that up easily, just because you've shown up.

I didn't want to kill a man. I'm not capable of killing a man. I wanted to kill a tyrant.

The person who is bent on killing you will follow you wherever you are.

So what if I'm smokin' weed onstage and doing what I gotta do? It's not me shooting nobody, stabbing nobody, killing nobody. It's a peaceful gesture and they have to respect that and appreciate that.

The art of creation is older than the art of killing.

Let me say this as clearly as I can: No matter how sharp a grievance or how deep a hurt, there is no justification for killing innocents.

I would, therefore, say that for no reason whatsoever, except in self-defence, should one think of killing any animal.