Umberto Eco Quotes about Past

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We are always remaking history. Our memory is always an interpretive reconstruction of the past, so is perspective.

We are always remaking history. Our memory is always an interpretive reconstruction of the past, so is perspective.

Umberto Eco

Memories, Past, Perspective

Interview with Chris Wallace, www.interviewmagazine.com. November 2, 2015.

There are magic moments, involving great physical fatigue and intense motor excitement, that produce visions of people known in the past. As I learned later from the delightful little book of the Abbé de Bucquoy, there are also visions of books as yet unwritten.

Umberto Eco

Book, Past, Magic Moments

Umberto Eco (1995). “Name of the Rose”, p.15, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.

Umberto Eco

Philosophy, Past, Self

Umberto Eco (1986). “Faith in Fakes: Essays”, Harvill Secker

It is clear that when you write a story that takes place in the past, you try to show what really happened in those times. But you are always moved by the suspicion that you are also showing something about our contemporary world.

Umberto Eco

Writing, Past, Trying

New Orleans is not in the grip of a neurosis of a denied past; it passes out memories generously like a great lord; it doesn't have to pursue "the real thing."

Umberto Eco

Memories, Real, Past

Umberto Eco (2014). “Travels in Hyperreality”, p.41, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

The postmodern reply to the modern consists of recognizing that the past, since it cannot really be destroyed, because its destruction leads to silence, must be revisited: but with irony, not innocently. I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows he cannot say to her, I love you madly, because he knows that she knows (and that she knows that he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still, there is a solution. He can say, As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly.

Umberto Eco

Love, Attitude, Past

Umberto Eco (1984). “Postscript to The name of the rose”, Harcourt