هل تسمح لى أن أناديك بالأحمق؟ أجل، لا تغضب، أنت أحمق برأيي. وهل تعرف مصدر حماقتك؟ إنها طيبتك! طيبتك المثيرة للسخرية! - Milan Kundera

Whenever I think about ancient cultures nostalgia seizes me. Perhaps this is nothing but envy of the sweet slowness of the history of that time. The era of ancient Egyptian culture lasted for several thousand years; the era of Greek antiquity for almost a thousand. In this respect, a single human life imitates the history of mankind; at first it is plunged into immobile slowness, and then only gradually does it accelerate more and more.

Every true novelist listens for that suprapersonal wisdom, which explains why great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors. Novelists who are more intelligent than their books should go into another line of work.

Because misogynists are the best of men.” All the poets reacted to these words with hooting. Boccaccio was forced to raise his voice: “Please understand me. Misogynists don’t despise women. Misogynists don’t like femininity. Men have always been divided into two categories. Worshipers of women, otherwise known as poets, and misogynists, or, more accurately, gynophobes. Worshipers or poets revere traditional feminine values such as feelings, the home, motherhood, fertility, sacred flashes of hysteria, and the divine voice of nature within us, while in misogynists or gynophobes these values inspire a touch of terror. Worshipers revere women’s femininity, while misogynists always prefer women to femininity. Don’t forget: a woman can be happy only with a misogynist. No woman has ever been happy with any of you!