I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.

More from Umberto Eco

• Absence is to love as wind to fire; it extinguishes the little flame, it fans the big.
• For every feared thing there is an opposing hope that encourages us.
• Accept loss forever
• A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.
• A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.
• A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us. Essays, "Character," 1844