EMIL CIORAN
In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world.
UMBERTO ECO
"Eternal Fascism - Fourteen Ways of Looking at a Blackshirt"
["Il fascismo eterno"]
It would be so much easier for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying "I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares". Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and point our finger at any of its new instances - every day, in every part of the world.
My friends and editors suggested I abbreviate the first hundred pages, which they found very difficult and demanding. Without thinking twice, I refused, because, as I insisted, if somebody wanted to enter the abbey and live there for seven days, he had to accept the abbey’s own pace. If he could not, he would never manage to read the whole book.
Therefore those first hundred pages are like a penance or initiation, and if someone does not like them, so much the worse for him.
He can stay at the foot of the mountain.