Umberto Eco Quotes

When you write a book, you are asking someone to make an investment in their time and money. A column can come and go as the weeks pass, but a book needs to be timeless.

I try to keep all my novels in print. Sometimes publishers don't agree with me as to their worth.

I'm very lucky. I'm very fortunate that my books have never gone out of print - none of them.

I didn't write a book. It wasn't for self-enrichment.

I guess I was raised in a household with a lot of reverence for the physical sanctity of books. You didn't destroy books.

What's important to me is that all of my books are in print - and, in a way, that becomes the challenge, not winning this prize or getting that review. It's that the work is there, and you can walk into many bookshops throughout the world and buy it.

Every writer secretly hopes that what he or she has written will endure.

We sold 400 books of poetry and thought we were well on the way to immortality.

The great American novel has not only already been written, it has already been rejected.

Writing is the hardest thing I know, but it was the only thing I wanted to do. I wrote for 20 years and published nothing before my first book.

Authors should be honored only for their works.

I actually own a copy of my own book; that's how dedicated I am as an author.

I sometimes feel that if your book sells more than 20 years, then there's something in it that you can say, gee, I did something that endures, that's timeless.

Productivity is a relative matter. And it's really insignificant: What is ultimately important is a writer's strongest books. It may be the case that we all must write many books in order to achieve a few lasting ones - just as a young writer or poet might have to write hundreds of poems before writing his first significant one.

It's what all writers dream of, that our work finds a measure of immortality that long outlives the words of any critic.

People often call 'If I Stay' my baby novel, and I have to correct them. It's not my first book. It's just the first one anybody paid attention to.

History proves that most writers get forgotten anyway. That's very likely to happen to my books, and if I'm extremely lucky, maybe one of my books will survive.

To be publishing Stephen King, to be a friend to Stephen, when he is absolutely what got me into this business, is a really neat thing and something I don't take for granted.

When I decided to write 'The God of Small Things', I had been working in cinema. It was almost a decision to downshift from there. I thought that 300 people would read it. But it created a platform of trust.

What makes a publishing house great? The easy answer is the consistency with which it produces books of value over a lengthy period of time.

Almost anyone can be an author; the business is to collect money and fame from this state of being.

It's been said that I am the most widely read writer of the 20th century. The number of books I've sold runs into untold millions.

As the publisher of FSG and the custodian of its legacy, I have an interested insider's view.

I will carry on writing, to be sure. But I don't know if I would want to publish again after Harry Potter.

Every writer hopes his or her book will be its own thing.