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

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.

Nor should we exclude the possibility that Islamic terrorism may begin to make common cause with Western political extremists of the far Left and far Right.

Young people discovering their sexuality must know they walk with a strong tradition and that they are not alone. They have a right to information without being pressured.

I want to have babies one day but not right now. When I do it I want to do it really well. I want it to be my best project in life.

We need to keep investing in economic and homeland security. We need to bank on the right kind of economic development. We need to embrace opportunities, but with the right kind of safeguards.

Criticism of government finds sanctuary in several portions of the 1st Amendment. It is part of the right of free speech. It embraces freedom of the press.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right. It is. It is the American Dream.

It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance.

I want to thank all the fans for their support over the years. Keep supporting the Knicks, we're moving in the right direction here and we will be exciting to watch and competing against the best in the NBA. Come back to the Garden for those exciting games.

Stories come from other shows at other studios where only 2,000 rounds were actually used and the money for the other 3,000 went right into the studio pockets. Corners were cut and that production suffered. Knock wood, that hasn't happened to us.

Never play anything that don't sound right. You might not make any money, but at least you won't get hostile with yourself.

Race horses are like golfers, you're never sure how they're going to come out of the stalls. It's just - hopefully the horses come out of the race all right, just fit and ready to go again in the near future, but 3rd was good. It's paid for its hay.

What the hell difference does it make, left or right? There were good men lost on both sides.