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There were three of us Witkiewicz, Bruno Schulz, and myself--the three muskateers of the Polish avant-garde between the wars. Only Witkiewicz remains to be discovered.

Witold Gombrowicz

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Witold Gombrowicz
Age: 64 †
Born: 1904
Born: August 4
Died: 1969
Died: July 24
Author
Diarist
Essayist
Jurist
Novelist
Playwright
Poet Lawyer
Writer
Gombrowicz
Witold Gombrowicz
Three
Bruno
Garde
Avant
Polish
Wars
Discovered
Remains
War

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The difference between western and eastern intellectuals is that the former have not been kicked in the ass enough.
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Foolishness is a twin sister of wisdom.
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It is in the prime of youth that man sinks into empty phrases and grimaces. It's in this smithy that our maturity is forged.
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Great! I've written something stupid, but I haven't signed a contract with anyone to produce solely wise and perfect works. I gave vent to my stupidity...and here I am, reborn.
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I became bold because I had absolutely nothing to lose: neither honors, nor earnings, nor friends. I had to find myself anew and rely only on myself, because I could rely on no one else. My form is my solitude.
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Great poetry must be admired, because it is great and because it is poetry, and so we admire it.
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Man does not fear death, only the suffering.
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Any artist who respects himself ought to be, and in every sense of the term, an emigre.
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To contradict, even in little matters, is the supreme necessity of art today.
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A universal style is one that knows how to embrace lovingly those not quite developed.
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Beauty beheld in solitude is even more lethal.
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Against the background of general freakishness the case of my particular freakishness was lost.
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Our element is unending immaturity.
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I am reading Sienkiewicz. What tormenting reading. What a powerful genius! And there never was such a first-rate writer of the second-rate class.
Witold Gombrowicz
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To me, art almost always speaks more forcefully when it appears in an imperfect, accidental, and fragmentary way, somehow just signaling its presence, allowing one to feel it through the ineptitude of the interpretation. I prefer the Chopin that reaches me in the street from an open window to the Chopin served in great style from the concert stage.
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Wherever I see some mystique, be it virtue or family, faith or fatherland, there I must commit some indecent act.
Witold Gombrowicz
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Serious literature does not exist to make life easy but to complicate it.
Witold Gombrowicz
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You, oh mature ones, keep company solely with other mature ones, and your maturity is so mature that it can only chum up with maturity!
Witold Gombrowicz
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I didn't go to the lectures. My valet, who was more distinguished than I, went instead.
Witold Gombrowicz
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When one does not have what one wants, one must want what one has”: “I have had, you see, to resort more and more to very small, almost invisible pleasures, little extras. You've no idea how great one becomes with these little details, it's incredible how one grows.
Witold Gombrowicz