A dictum [Beckett] quotes from his favourite philosopher, the second-generation Cartesian Arnold Geulincx (1624-1669) suggests his overall stance tow… - J. M. Coetzee

[Being peppered with invitations to travel far and wide to give lectures] has always seemed to me one of the stranger aspects of literary fame: you prove your competence as a writer and an inventor of stories, and then people clamour for you to make speeches and tell them what you think about the world.

Erasmus dramatizes a well-established political position: that of the fool who claims license to criticize all and sundry without reprisal, since his madness defines him as not fully a person and therefore not a political being with political desires and ambitions. The Praise of Folly, therefore sketches the possibility of a position for the critic of the scene of political rivalry, a position not simply impartial between the rivals but also, by self-definition, off the stage of rivalry altogether.

What I did not know was how longing could store itself away in the hollows of one's bones and then one day without warning flood out.