

“chess is deeper and more mysterious than all of us put together; it鈥檒l exist until somebody manages to master it completely, and that鈥檒l never happen, Ferenck, it鈥檚 impossible for that to happen. Oslovski looked at him in surprise, and said, at the end of the day it鈥檚 a question of statistics: we鈥檒l keep getting better, more intelligent, more gifted, we鈥檒l keep going farther. Soon the great men of the 21st century will be born, or rather, they鈥檒l turn into adults, because many may already have been born, and then we鈥檒l know about them. The Freuds and Marxes and Einsteins and Nietzsches of the 21st century must be going to school right now, or still playing with toy cars, or watching the fall of a leaf in a park, who knows? And apart from them, there鈥檒l also be a young Kafka suffering then turning to literature as therapy, and there鈥檒l be an aristocratic Proust, who鈥檒l portray the decadent bourgeoisie of the early 21st century from within, and of course the new Rimbaud must already be walking the streets, a young man with his fists clenched with hate, struggling against the social forms, and the Bukowski of the 21st century receiving a thrashing from his father and discovering that alcohol dulls the pain, and of course some boy of seven or eight must be on the verge of checkmating an adult on a chessboard,”
― Necropolis
― Necropolis

“Somebody," said Jacques, "your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour--and in the oddest places!--for the lack of it.”
― Giovanni鈥檚 Room
― Giovanni鈥檚 Room

“All things being equal (fortunately things are seldom equal, not exactly), people prefer to be with others who look like them, speak the same dialect, and hold the same beliefs. An amplification of this evidently inborn predisposition leads with frightening ease to racism and religious bigotry. Then, also with frightening ease, good people do bad things. I know this truth from experience, having grown up in the Deep South during the 1930s”
― The Meaning of Human Existence
― The Meaning of Human Existence
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