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Iliyan Kuzmanov Biography

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“God Mithra, showed that it is not good to just take whenever and whatever you want. It is also okay to refuse to take when you can. And to be able to give up and give something of your own to the overtaken. Mithra showed that strength is not to knock someone down, but to get them back up on their feet... He used his ever-growing host to help and dispense justice in lands strewn with lawlessness. He took from those who did as they pleased and amassed more and more at the expense of the helpless and the slaves... He was the shepherd with the spear in his hands, breaking the bones of those who dared to hurt the defenseless.”

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Book:The Devil I Know Him
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“But nothing could change the memory of love… I wondered, does falling in love go through the eyes, or through the heart? If somebody asked me after a while, when it was all over, “What are you carrying with you?” I would answer, “Her.” I didn’t want to have anything else. I didn’t need anything else. Afterwards they called me The Devil, the master of lies, the one who bought and sold souls, the one with countless faces. They were right. I was taking the soul, bringing out all that was hidden there, deep inside, or behind countless masks, tempting it to come out into the light, tricking it into sucking up and showing itself.”

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Book:The Devil I Know Him
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“They said that the devil was insensitive, that he was cruel, heartless, had lost his soul. This was not true for me. All the devil owns are emotions, passions, he is their master. He who is burned in them can be reborn in the same fire. He must be the rational one, but he was not. He was cruel, merciless to anything devoid of love, to anything that robbed us of our humanity. Yes, he was human and despised those who lived without love, who wasted life, for he knew the value of every moment. He hated all those who reviled love and chained it to satisfy their basic needs. Those who preached love, and behind their sermons, there was a slyness...”

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Book:The Devil I Know Him
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“... the love within us is important, not the love we take or the love we are given. What is important is the fire that burns within us, the heat we beam, the fires we can light. The devil hates those who sit around other people’s firesides at night, basking in their shining bodies and hiding in their pitiful shells. Creatures ugly, ugly and terrible, but they needed love too. Anomalies… I also understood what we needed. Yes, I learned much more than I had even hoped. And probably more than I would have wanted to know if I had a choice.”

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Book:The Devil I Know Him
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“It was such a time then – the words like payback, revenge and vendetta were very important to us. When I think of myself, I see a young and immature man, eager to get what he wanted, and pay for what someone else should have gotten in return. Both then and now, we are concerned with how much more to take and how much less to give. That was also my understanding of justice, but I knew I was obligated to make sure that they received retribution. And I saw retribution as a coin that was scrolled between the fingers of one of my hands. Then it would shoot up from the thumb and luck would decide – when you caught it in the air, who would get punishment and who wouldn’t.”

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Book:The Devil I Know Him
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“What happened to the losers? No one talked about them. Where were they? Where were the losers of us, where were the vanquished of life, where were the whores going in this shitty life that only acknowledged honourable and righteous women? The winners had no place next to the vanquished. The losers could not be loved, but only defeated. Like in a forest where the beasts eat the weaker, the fucking pray… but we had come out of it, hadn’t we supposedly conquered it? Supposedly we are smart, not animals, not savages! We thought, we reasoned, why do we keep turning into beasts?”

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Book:The Devil I Know Him
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“All the priests needed was the knowledge of what is and should be. That, at least, was how they thought they would gain salvation, escape the suffering of this world into another – even a fictional one. The priests wrote and copied books. They were the guardians of both knowledge and the belief that the world would one day be wiser. They believed that through the constant cultivation of the soul, it would one day be free. But they also believed that without effort, without hope and faith, nothing good awaited them. So their days were divided between writing and transcribing and praying. In their prayers and dreams at night, they imagined the world they hoped to one day to live in. In their prayers, they begged for good to come, for the world to change for the better, to mature. The two priests had known each other for a long time, and although they believed in and prayed to different deities, they were good friends who sat together without saying anything. And yet when they said nothing, they talked so much. They secretly hoped that one day there would be no need for their writings and that the spirit, as well as the flesh, would be completely free. That both word and knowledge would not be chained in parchments, but would soar through space, constantly filling it with new things. Their thoughts are not spoken aloud, as it is forbidden. Such thoughts were punished cruelly, for millennia, and even he who awoke was unable to defend them. The most lucrative resource on this earth, the human body and mind, is completely free... Such heresy!”

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Book:The Devil I Know Him
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“Here the question: “Why?” is absent, dogs are to please and to obey. They are not allowed to show the flash in their eyes or show their sharp teeth, fuckers! And I want to cry, I don’t know why, but I want to cry, maybe because of the lost fire in the eyes. The human must be the centre of the world, and so he was painted in that cave. Is it the master who decides who is a dog, what means to be a human?”

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Book:The Devil I Know Him
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