The Only Lost Cause Is One We

Hope Is Not A Feeling Of Certainty That Everything Ends Well. Hope Is Just A Feeling That Life And Work Have A Meaning.

The Kind Of Hope That I Often Think About…i Understand Above All As A State Of Mind, Not A State Of The World. Either We Have Hope Within Us, Or We Don’t. It Is A Dimension Of The Soul It’s Not Essentially Dependent Upon Some Particular Observation Of The World Or Estimate Of The Situation. Hope Is Not The Conviction That Something Will Turn Out Well, But The Certainty That Something Makes Sense, Regardless Of How It Turns Out.

There Is Only One Art, Whose Sole Criterion Is The Power, The Authenticity, The Revelatory Insight, The Courage And Suggestiveness With Which It Seeks Its Truth. ... Thus, From The Standpoint Of The Work And Its Worth It Is Irrelevant To Which Political Ideas The Artist As A Citizen Claims Allegiance, Which Ideas He Would Like To Serve With His Work Or Whether He Holds Any Such Ideas At All.

The Worst Thing Is That We Live In A Contaminated Moral Environment. We Fell Morally Ill Because We Became Used To Saying Something Different From What We Thought. Concepts Such As Love, Friendship, Compassion, Humility Or Forgiveness Lost Their Depth And Dimension.

Let Us Admit That Most Of Us Writers Feel An Essential Aversion To Politics. By Taking Such A Position, However, We Accept The Perverted Principle Of Specialization, According To Which Some Are Paid To Write About The Horrors Of The World And Human Responsibility And Others To Deal With Those Horrors And Bear The Human Responsibility For Them.