Semiotics is a general theory of all existing languages... all forms of communication - visual, tactile, and so on... There is general semiotics, which is a philosophical approach to this field, and then there are many specific semiotics.

Beauty is boring because it is predictable.

Berlusconi is a genius in communication. Otherwise, he would never have become so rich.

Translation is the art of failure.

Nothing gives a fearful man more courage than another's fear.

Religion has nothing to do with God. It's a fundamental attitude of human beings, who ask about the origins of life and what happens after death. For many, the answer is a personal god. In my opinion, it's religion that produces God, not the other way round.

It is psychologically very hard to go through life without the justification, and the hope, provided by religion.

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.

The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.

A dream is a scripture, and many scriptures are nothing but dreams.

When someone has to intervene to defend the liberty of the press, that society is sick.

Poetry is not a matter of feelings, it is a matter of language. It is language which creates feelings.

When the poet is in love, he is incapable of writing poetry on love. He has to write when he remembers that he was in love.

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.

Our life is full of empty space.

The comic is the perception of the opposite; humor is the feeling of it.

Sometimes you say things with a smile with the precise intention of making it clear that you are not being serious, and are only kidding. If I salute a friend with a smile and say, 'How are you, you old scoundrel!' clearly I don't really mean he's a scoundrel.