"The pressure of an all-powerful totalitarian state creates an emotional tension in its citizens that determines their acts. When people are divided … - Czesław Miłosz

The pressure of an all-powerful totalitarian state creates an emotional tension in its citizens that determines their acts. When people are divided into "loyalists" and "criminals" a premium is placed on every type of conformist, coward, and hireling; whereas among the "criminals" one finds a singularly high percentage of people who are direct, sincere, and true to themselves.

It is impossible to communicate to people who have not experienced it the undefinable menace of total rationalism.

— Most distinguished voyager, what was your eon like? — Comic. Terror is forgotten.
Only the ridiculous is remembered by posterity.
Death from a wound, from a noose, from starvation
Is one death, but folly is uncounted and new every year.

Not soon, as late as the approach of my ninetieth year, I felt a door opening in me and I entered the clarity of early morning.

One after another my former lives were departing, like ships, together with their sorrow.

And the countries, cities, gardens, the bays of seas assigned to my brush came closer, ready now to be described better than they were before.