QuoteProject
I think of myself as a serious professor who, during the weekend, writes novels.
Umberto Eco
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote reflects the duality of the author's identity as both an academic and a creative writer.

Umberto Eco describes his self-perception as a serious academic during the week, while also embracing his creative side as a novelist on the weekends. This highlights the balance between professional responsibility and personal passion, suggesting that one can pursue multiple identities and interests in life.

Themes

IdentityCreativityBalanceAcademicWriter

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about managing different roles in life.

More from Umberto Eco

The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity.
Umberto EcoRead
I think that at a certain age, say fifteen or sixteen, poetry is like masturbation. But later in life good poets burn their early poetry, and bad poets publish it. Thankfully I gave up rather quickly.
Umberto EcoRead
But why do some people support [the heretics]?" "Because it serves their purposes, which concern the faith rarely, and more often the conquest of power." "Is that why the church of Rome accuses all its adversaries of heresy?" "That is why, and that is also why it recognizes as orthodoxy any heresy it can bring back under its own control or must accept because the heresy has become too strong.
Umberto EcoRead
You die, but most of what you have accumulated will not be lost; you are leaving a message in a bottle.
Umberto EcoRead
"Then we are living in a place abandoned by God," I said, disheartened. "Have you found any places where God would have felt at home?" William asked me, looking down from his great height.
Umberto EcoRead
The lunatic is all idΓ©e fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.
Umberto EcoRead

Similar quotes

Art is not a democracy. People don't get to vote on how it ends.
George R. R. MartinRead
Influences come from everywhere but when you are actually shooting you work primarily by instinct. But what is instinct? It is a lifetime accumulation of influence: experience, knowledge, seeing and hearing. There is little time for reflection in taking a photograph. All your experiences come to a peak and you work on two levels: conscious and unconscious.
Arnold NewmanRead
All great art is born of the metropolis.
Ezra PoundRead
Movies become living organisms that graduate from a filmmaker's sphere of influence and pretty much look back and tell you how they need to be said goodbye to. A movie often turns around and looks at you and says, "Here is who I am, and that's maybe now how you see me, but that's who I've become." And you've got to be open enough to go with that.
Steven SpielbergRead
Who made art history? Not the most reasonable people. The mad men did. If painting is the mirror of a time, it must be mad to have a true image of what that time is. To one madness we oppose another madness.
Max ErnstRead
Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make.
David HockneyRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.