Everything is repeated, in a circle. History is a master because it teaches us that it doesn’t exist. It’s the permutations that matter.
I did not know then what Brother William was seeking, and to tell the truth, I still do not know today, and I presume he himself did not know, moved as he was solely by the desire for truth, and by the suspicion – which I could see he always harbored – that the truth was not what was appearing to him at any given moment.
The visitor enters and says, “What a lot of books! Have you read them all?”... The best answer is the one always used by Roberto Leydi: “And more, dear sir, many more,” which freezes the adversary and plunges him into a state of awed admiration. But I find it merciless and angst-generating. Now I have fallen back on the riposte: “No, these are the ones I have to read by the end of the month. I keep the others in my office.
For two years I have refused to answer idle questions on the order of “Is your novel an open work or not?” How should I know? That is your business, not mine. Or “With which of your characters do you identify?” For God’s sake, with whom does an author identify? With the adverbs, obviously.
The young no longer want to study anything, learning is in decline, the whole world walks on its head, blind men lead others equally blind and cause them to plunge into the abyss, birds leave the nest before they can fly, the jackass plays the lyre, oxen dance.
For the male who dominates and writes, or by writing dominates, the woman has always been portrayed with hostility from the earliest times. Let us not be deceived by angelic descriptions of women. On the contrary, precisely because great literature is dominated by sweet, gentle creatures, the world of satire – which is that of the popular imagination – continually demonizes the woman, from antiquity, through the Middle Ages, and up to modern times.
There are many things that I do not know because I photocopied a text and then relaxed as if I had read it.
The “thesis neurosis” has begun: the student abandons the thesis, returns to it, feels unfulfilled, loses focus, and uses his thesis as an alibi to avoid other challenges in his life that he is too cowardly to address. This student will never graduate.
To make them forget how bad human beings are, they were taught too insistently that bears are good. Instead of being told honestly what humans are and what bears are.
The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else. If it had been possible, he would have settled the matter otherwise, and without bloodshed. He doesn’t boast of his own death or of others’. But he doesn’t repent. He suffers and keeps his mouth shut; if anything, others then exploit him, making him a myth, while he, the man worthy of esteem, was only a poor creature who reacted with dignity and courage in an event bigger than he was.
Scratch the heresy and you will find the leper. Every battle against heresy wants only this: to keep the leper as he is.
But what use is the unicorn to you if your intellect doesn’t believe in it?
With Germans, as with women, you never get to the point.
What is a saint supposed to do, if not convert wolves?
In order for there to be a mirror of the world, it is necessary that the world have a form.
The Antichrist can be born from piety itself, from excessive love of God or of the truth, as the heretic is born from the saint and the possessed from the seer. 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.
As long as you remain in your private vacuum, you can pretend you are in harmony with the One. But the moment you pick up the clay, electronic or otherwise, you become a demiurge, and he who embarks on the creation of worlds is already tainted with corruption and evil.
I don’t believe one writes for oneself. I think that writing is an act of love- you write in order to give something to someone else. To communicate something. to have other people share your feelings. This problem of how long your work survives is fundamental for a novelist or a poet. One hopes for a sense of continuity.
Because learning does not consist only of knowing what we must or we can do, but also of knowing what we could do and perhaps should not do.
But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same. Hatred has to be cultivated as a civic passion. The enemy is the friend of the people. You always want someone to hate in order to feel justified in your own misery.