Violet wells

“His true goal was not to free the prisoners; it was to show that people without fear still exist. That, too, was playacting. But he had no other possibility. His choice was not between playacting and action. His choice was between playacting and no action at all. There are situations in which people are condemned to playact. Their struggle with mute power (the mute power across the river, a police transmogrified into mute microphones in the wall) is the struggle of a theater company that has attacked an army.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“You'd like to think the death of a person is like the death of a star, that it will enrich the cosmos with precious elements, with added meaning.”
― Glenn Haybittle, The War in Venice

“Venice is a Dorian Gray city. Somewhere up there in the world's attic, there's another place with the haggard, poxed and ravaged face of unspeakable evil. And I suspect it's Cardiff.”
― A.A. Gill, Table Talk

“Not long ago, I caught myself experiencing a most incredible sensation. Leafing through a book on Hitler, I was touched by some of his portraits: they reminded me of my childhood. I grew up during the war; several members of my family perished in Hitler's concentration camps; but what were their deaths compared with the memories of a lost period in my life, a period that would never return?”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being