You are not doomed to reproduce what your ancestors have done. The son will not be like his father, the daughter will not be like her mother. She can invent something new. I think that is the best message of modernity.
Pascal BrucknerWhatever the flows of our modern times are the idea is that you can create something new out of nothing.
Pascal BrucknerThere is no life without guilt anyway, at least in the Western world. I think in other civilizations it might be different but if the world is getting Westernized all over, guilt will enter through the technology and democracy and their actions. It will come side by side so there won't be anymore innocent societies in the future I think which in fact is not such a bad thing.
Pascal BrucknerThe cult of happiness turns into a huge concern which to my opinion is exactly contrary to what happiness should be: a paradise of enchantment.
Pascal BrucknerWe should distinguish between responsibility and guilt. Guilt only touches the ones who committed the crimes but the son of a criminal is not a criminal himself.
Pascal BrucknerThe writer has a life and a personality but the problem of today is that most of those writers have exactly the same life; they belong to the same social class, the same milieu, they have the same experiences. Once you read one of those books, you have read them all. And this is a problem.
Pascal Bruckner