Stanisław Jerzy Lec

"It is the high priests that make demands — not the gods they serve."

"You will always find some Eskimos ready to instruct the Congolese on how to cope with heat waves."

"The Order of the Garter usually goes to people who already have full wardrobes."

"Every great writer has one single obsession, and Lec tells us: "I wanted to tell the world just one word. Unable to do it I became a writer." And in another aphorism one is reminded of Picasso as he characteristically moves towards his creation through a continual grappling with and destruction of chaotic forms: "What is chaos? It is the Order destroyed during Creation." It was also Picasso who memorably called art "a lie which tells the truth", and Lec comes pretty close to the maestro with this one: "A beautiful lie? Listen! Thats creativity." Lec sums up the predicament of the one gifted with creative powers, the well-known neurotic, pathological condition of the artist, in such words: "The richer your imagination, the poorer you feel." But then Lec also assures him: "Every bush can burn if you fire it with your imagination." Yet all that anguish and loneliness may be worth it for: "To suffer heartaches and not be a poet? Whatever for?"

"Morality is either a social contract or you have to pay cash."

"The window to the world can be covered by a newspaper."