“There could be joy in destruction, too, couldn’t there? Isn’t Jesus Christ’s Second Coming supposed to occur only after a lot of unmitigated destruction? But again, human history is fraught with tragedies in which man spared no effort to destroy with millenarian joy, only to learn that no messiah appeared afterwards.”

p 90
Shizuka-na seikatsu (A Quiet Life) (1990)

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Kenzaburō Ōe 43
Japanese author 1935

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