We can regard the gulag as a septic tank used by totalitarian kitsch to dispose of its refuse. - Milan Kundera

The man raised his glass, 'To you!'

Can't you think of a wittier toast?'

Something was beginning to irritate him about the girl's game. Now sitting face to face with her, he realized it wasn't just the words which were turning her into a stranger, but that her whole persona had changed, the movements of her body and her facial expression, and that she unpalatably and faithfully resembled that type of woman whom he knew so well and for whom he felt some aversion.

And so (holding his glass in his raised hand), he corrected his toast: 'O.K., then I won't drink to you, but to your kind, in which are combined so successfully the better qualities of the animal and the worse aspects of the human being.

It was time laid bare, time in and of itself, time at its most basic and primal, and it forced me to call it by its true name (for now I was living pure time — pure, vacant time) so as not to forget it for a moment, keep it constantly before me, and feel its weight.

Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.