Saturday, October 19, 2013

Umberto Eco: "The Infinity of Lists" (inspiration, process)

It's not new, but I still love this quote: 

"We have a limit, a very discouraging, humiliating limit: death. That's why we like all the things that we assume have no limits and, therefore, no end. It's a way of escaping thoughts about death. We make lists because we don't want to die."

Read the whole article here: Spiegel interview with Umberto Eco


"The list is the origin of culture. It's part of the history of art and literature. What does culture want? To make infinity comprehensible. It also wants to create order -- not always, but often. And how, as a human being, does one face infinity? How does one attempt to grasp the incomprehensible? Through lists, through catalogs, through collections in museums and through encyclopedias and dictionaries..."

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