翁贝托·埃科·欧姆里是意大利中世纪主义者、哲学家、符号学家、文化批评家、政治和社会评论员以及小说家。在英语中，他最出名的是他1980年的通俗小说《玫瑰的名字》，一部将小说中的符号学与圣经分析、中世纪研究和文学理论相结合的历史谜团。
I write what I write.
我写我写的东西。
The thought that all experience will be lost at the moment of my death makes me feel pain and fear... What a waste, decades spent building up experience, only to throw it all away... We remedy this sadness by working. For example, by writing, painting, or building cities.
一想到在我死的那一刻所有的经历都会消失，我就感到痛苦和恐惧。。。太浪费了，几十年来积累的经验，却都扔掉了。。。我们通过工作来弥补这种悲伤。例如，通过写作、绘画或建造城市。
Musical compositions can be very sad - Chopin - but you have the pleasure of this sadness. The cheap consolation is: you will be happy. The higher consolation is the pleasure and recognition of your unhappiness, the pleasure of having recognised that fate, destiny and life are such as they are and so you reach a higher form of consciousness.
音乐作品可以是非常悲伤的-肖邦-但你有这种悲伤的乐趣。廉价的安慰是：你会幸福的。更高的安慰是对你的不快乐的愉悦和认可，是认识到命运、命运和生命都是如此的愉悦，因此你达到了更高的意识形态。
But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
但现在我开始相信，整个世界都是一个谜，一个无害的谜，我们自己疯狂地试图解释它，仿佛它有一个潜在的真理，这使它变得可怕。
Berlusconi is a genius in communication. Otherwise, he would never have become so rich.
贝卢斯科尼是个沟通天才。否则，他就不会这么富有了。
We are never racist against somebody who is very far away. I don't know any racism against the Eskimos. To have a racist feeling, there must be an other who is slightly different from us - but is living close to us.
我们从不对一个离我们很远的人实行种族主义。我不知道对爱斯基摩人有什么种族歧视。要有一种种族主义的感觉，就必须有一个和我们稍有不同的人——但却住在我们身边。
Certainly, light fiction exists and encompasses mysteries or second-class romance novels, books that are read on the beach, whose only aim is to entertain. These books are not concerned with style or creativity - instead they are successful because they are repetitive and follow a template that readers enjoy.
当然，轻小说是存在的，它包含了神秘或二等浪漫小说，这些书都是在海滩上读的，它们的唯一目的是娱乐。这些书与风格或创造力无关——相反，它们之所以成功，是因为它们是重复的，遵循读者喜欢的模板。
There is no great sport in having bullets flying about one in every direction, but I find they have less horror when among them than when in anticipation.
让子弹朝各个方向飞来飞去并不是什么好运动，但我发现，当它们在一起时，比预期中更不可怕。