“Fear prophets, Adso, and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them. Jorge did a diabolical thing because he loved truth so lewdly that he dared anything in order to destroy falsehood. Jorge feared the second book of Aristotle because it perhaps really did teach how to distort the face of everything truth so that we would not become the slaves of our ghosts. Perhaps the mission of those who love mankind is to make people laugh at the truth, to make truth laugh, because the only truth lies in learning to free ourselves from the insane passion for truth.”

— Umberto Eco, “The Name of the Rose”

Give up sainthood, renounce wisdom,
And it will be a hundred times better
for everyone.

Give up kindness, renounce morality,
And men will rediscover filial piety and
love.

Give up ingenuity, renounce profit,
And bandits and thieves will
disappear.

These three are outward forms alone;
they are not sufficient in themselves.
It is more important
To see the simplicity,
To realize one’s true nature,
To cast off selfishness
And temper desire.

— Laozi, “Tao Te Ching”

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction.

And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

— Howard Zinn, “A Power Governments Cannot Suppress”

“1984 and 1Q84 are fundamentally the same in terms of how they work. If you don’t believe in the world, and if there is no love in it, then everything is phony. No matter which world we are talking about, no matter what kind of world we are talking about, the line separating fact from hypothesis is practically invisible to the eye. It can only be seen with the inner eye, the eye of the mind.”

— Haruki Murakami

“I’m tired of living in hatred and resentment. I’m tired of living unable to love anyone. I don’t have a single friend — not one. And, worst of all, I can’t even love myself. Why is that? Why can’t I love myself? It’s because I can’t love anyone else. A person learns how to love himself through the simple acts of loving and being loved by someone else. Do you understand what I am saying? A person who is incapable of loving another cannot properly love himself. No, I’m not blaming you for this. Come to think of it, you may be such a victim. You probably don’t know how to love yourself. Am I wrong about that?”

— Haruki Murakami, “1Q84”

“My painting is not violent, it’s life that is violent. Even within the most beautiful landscape, in the trees, under the leaves, the insects are eating each other; violence is a part of life. We are born with a scream; we come into life with a scream and maybe love is a mosquito net between the fear of living and the fear of death.”

— Francis Bacon, “The Last Interview”

“Certainly, if you are not aware of who you are, you cannot be love. You will be fear. Fear is just the opposite of love. Remember, hate is not the opposite of love, as people think; hate is love standing upside down, it is not the opposite of love. The real opposite of love is fear. In love one expands, in fear one shrinks. In fear one becomes closed, in love one opens. In fear one doubts, in love one trusts. In fear one is left lonely, in love one disappears.”

— Osho

Goodreads: At the heart of “The Prague Cemetery” is the concept of hatred. What inspired you to explore hatred as a theme for a novel?

Umberto Eco: I could say that there are too many novels devoted to love and that it was time to explain hatred, which is a feeling far more diffused than love (otherwise there would not be wars, crimes, and racist behavior). Love is a selective relationship (I love you and you love me and the rest of the world is excluded by such a feeling), while hatred is collective, social: An entire people can hate another one, and that is why dictators, to keep they followers together, ask for hatred (not for love). I remember that having spent my childhood under a fascist dictatorship, I was continually taught to hate some other country— French, Englishmen, Americans — and was encouraged to love only Mussolini. Happily this kind of education did not work, and this is why I have written “The Prague Cemetery”.

— Goodreads Interview with Umberto Eco about his new book “The Prague Cemetery”

An intimate relationship does not banish loneliness. Only when we are comfortable with who we are can we truly function independently in a healthy way, can we truly function within a relationship. Two halves do not make a whole when it comes to a healthy relationship: it takes two wholes.”

— Patricia Fry