Crimes Of Which A People Is Ashamed

Added To The Moral Solitude Of The Murderer Comes The Solitude Of The Artist, Which Can Acknowledge No Authority, Save That Of Another Artist.

The Most Reasonable Man Always Manages, When He Pulls The Trigger, To Become A Dispenser Of Justice.

I Wanted To Swallow Myself By Opening My Mouth Very Wide And Turning It Over My Head So That It Would Take In My Whole Body, And Then The Universe, Until All That Would Remain Of Me Would Be A Ball Of Eaten Thing Which Little By Little Would Be Annihilated: That Is How I See The End Of The World.

Excluded By My Birth And Tastes From The Social Order, I Was Not Aware Of Its Diversity. Nothing In The World Was Irrelevant: The Stars On A General's Sleeve, The Stock-market Quotations, The Olive Harvest, The Style Of The Judiciary, The Wheat Exchange, Flower-beds. Nothing. This Order, Fearful And Feared, Whose Details Were All Inter-related, Had A Meaning: My Exile.

A Great Wind Swept Over The Ghetto, Carrying Away Shame, Invisibility And Four Centuries Of Humiliation. But When The Wind Dropped People Saw It Had Been Only A Little Breeze, Friendly, Almost Gentle.