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Anthony M. Kennedy

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“He actually does know everything by Rumi, too, without the two of us ever having spent time together leafing through the poetry volumes that he bought me for our engagement, though that was what I always wanted us to do. I wanted to share it with him, the rustle of the pages, the effect of every word, and now I'm the one who doesn't dare pick up the books, fearing that they might have lost their power somewhere between Tehran, Istanbul, East Berlin, and here.”

“I fucking romanticize the idea of disappearing forever. I don’t mean checking out early, pulling a Hemingway with the shotgun, leaving a mess for the maid and a legacy for the critics to pick over like vultures on a roadside carcass. That’s too final. That’s too loud. I’m talking about the fade out. The slow dissolve. I’m talking about the Great Vanishing Act.”

“All the systems which explain so precisely why the world is as it is and why it can never be otherwise, have always called forth in me the same kind of uneasiness one has when face to face with the regulations displayed under the glaring lights of a prison cell. Even if one had been born in prison and had never seen the stars or seas or woods, one would instinctively know of timeless freedom in unlimited space. My evil star, however, had fated me to be born in times when only the sharply demarcated and precisely calculable where in fashion.... "Of course, I am on the Right, on the Left, in the Centre; I descend from the monkey; I believe only what I see; the universe is going to explode at this or that speed" - we hear such remarks after the first words we exchange, from people whom we would not have expected to introduce themselves as idiots. If one is unfortunate enough to meet them again in five years, everything is different except their authoritative and mostly brutal assuredness. Now they wear a different badge in their buttonhole; and the universe now shrinks at such a speed that your hair stands on end.”

“Man is born violent but is kept in check by the people around him. If he nevertheless manages to throw off his fetters, he can count on applause, for everyone recognizes himself in him. Deeply ingrained, nay, buried dreams come true. The unlimited radiates its magic even upon crime, which, not coincidentally, is the main source of entertainment in Eumeswil. I, as an anarch, not uninterested but disinterested, can understand that. Freedom has a wide range and more facets than a diamond.”

“If I love freedom above all else, then any commitment becomes a metaphor, a symbol. This touches on the difference between the forest fleer and the partisan:this distinction is not qualitative but essential in nature. The anarch is closer to Being. The partisan moves within the social or national party structure, the anarch is outside of it. Of course, the anarch cannot elude the party structure, since he lives in society.”