What has gone wrong with — Peter Weiss

"Only in his poetry did he have the courage to love."

"In Dante the hero would rather flee and renounce the tempting embrace instead of yielding to his desires and enduring the attendant dangers."

"And the priests looked down into the pit of injustice and they turned away their faces and said Our kingdom is not as the kingdom of this world Our life on earth is but a pilgrimage The soul lives on humility and patience at the same time screwing from the poor their last centime They settled down among their treasures and ate and drank with princes and to the starving they said Suffer Suffer as he suffered on the cross for it is the will of God"

"Weve got rights the right to starve Weve got jobs waiting for work Were all brothers lousy and dirty Were all free and equal to die like dogs"

"Were all so clogged with dead ideas passed from generation to generation that even the best of us dont know the way out We invented the Revolution but we dont know how to run it Look everyone wants to keep something from the past a souvenir of the old regime This man decides to keep a painting This one keeps his mistress He [pointing] keeps his garden He [pointing] keeps his estate He keeps his country house He keeps his factories This man couldnt part with his shipyards This one kept his army and that one keeps his king"

"I could buy myself paper, a pen, a pencil and a brush and could create pictures whenever and wherever I wanted. … That evening, in the spring of 1947, on the embankment of the Seine in Paris, at the age of thirty, I saw that it was possible to live and work in the world, and that I could participate in the exchange of ideas that was taking place all around, bound to no country."