Kiril

“It seems to me that here, accidentally, I have betrayed the greatest and ultimate secret of style: we have to know how to delight in the word. If literature generally dares to speak, it is not at all because it is certain of its truth, but only because it is certain of its delight.”
― Witold Gombrowicz, Diary

“I can say without exaggeration that I “devoted myself” to literature. For me, literature is not a matter of a career and future monuments but the excavating from myself of the maximum value of which I am capable. If it were to turn out that that which I write is inconsequential, then I am defeated not only as a writer but as a man.”
― Witold Gombrowicz, Diary

“An excessive respect for scientific truth has obscured our own truth. In our eagerness to understand reality, we forget that we are not here to understand reality, but only to express it. We, art, are reality. Art is a fact and not commentary attached to fact.”
― Witold Gombrowicz, Diary

“The Irish do have a despairing quality of gaiety, but they have also a dour and brooding ghost that rides on their shoulders and peers in on their thoughts.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden