Rik Peeters

“I am amazed that you talk to one another at all. Each of you is a different solution to the human face and personifies a different understanding of man. If a bearded man is okay, then a clean-shaven or mustached one is a monster, a clown, a degenerate, and a general absurdity; and if a clean-shaven man is the right type, then a bearded one is a monstrosity, sloppiness, nonsense, and foulness. Well then! What are you waiting for? Start punching!”
― Witold Gombrowicz, Diary

“No one really knew what was being played because the perfection of the pianist did not allow one to concentrate on Brahms, and the perfection of Brahms drew attention away from the pianist. But he got there. Applause. The applause of the knowledgable. The applause of amateurs. The applause of the ignorant. The applause of the herd. Applause incited by applause. Applause feeding on itself, pilling onto itself, exciting, creating applause. And no one could NOT clap because everyone was clapping.”
― Witold Gombrowicz, Diary

“When talking to a Communist, don't you have the impression that you are speaking to a "beleiver"? For a Communist, too, everything is taken care of, at least in the current phase of the dialectical process. He is in possission of the truth he knows. And, what is more, he believes, and what is still more, he wants to believe. Even if you could prove otherwise to him, he will not be convinced, because he has given himself up to the Party. The Party knows better, the Party knows for him.”
― Witold Gombrowicz, Diary

“Ah! I knew the masculinity that they, men, fabricated among themselves, goading eachother into it, mutually forcing themselves to it in a panic-stricken fear at the woman in themselves. I knew men straining to attain Masculinity, convlsed males, giving each other lessons in manliness. This type of manartificially magnified his traits: he exaggerated this heaviness, brutality, strength, and seriousness, and in it was he who raped, conguered by force. He was affraid, thereforece, of beauty and grace, which are the weapons of weakness, he lost himself in male monstrosity and was becoming licentious and trivial or dull and clumsy.”
― Witold Gombrowicz, Diary