It is not enough to invent new machines, new regulations, or new institutions. We must understand differently and more perfectly the true purpose of our existence on this earth.

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought.

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.

It would appear that the traditional parliamentary democracies can offer no fundamental opposition to that automatism of technological civilization and the industrial-consumer society, for they too are being dragged helplessly along by it. People are manipulated in ways that are infinitely more subtle and refined than the brutal methods used in post-totalitarian societies.

English is the 'language of liberty' for nations emerging from years of cultural oppression.

We fell morally ill because we became used to saying something different from what we thought.

But if I were to say who influenced me most, then I'd say Franz Kafka. And his works were always anchored in the Central European region.