Václav Havel

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

We introduced a new model of behavior: don't get involved in diffuse general ideological polemics with the center, to whom numerous concrete causes are always being sacrificed; fight "only" for those concrete causes, and be prepared to fight for them unswervingly, to the end. In other words, don't get mixed up in backroom wheeling and dealing, but play an open game.

Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have — by disrupting that order — a way of surprising.

The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and … often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.

Without the constantly living and articulated experience of absurdity, there would be no reason to attempt to do something meaningful. And on the contrary, how can one experience one's own absurdity if one is not constantly seeking meaning?

The truth is not simply what you think it is; it is also the circumstances in which it is said, and to whom, why, and how it is said.

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

The real test of a man is not how well he plays the role he has invented for himself, but how well he plays the role that destiny assigned to him.

The cliché organizes life; it expropriates people's identity; it becomes ruler, defense lawyer, judge, and the law.

There's always something suspicious about an intellectual on the winning side.

Sober perseverance is more effective than enthusiastic emotions, which are all too capable of being transferred, with little difficulty, to something different each day.

The role of the writer is not simply to arrange Being according to his own lights; he must also serve as a medium to Being and remain open to its often unfathomable dictates. This is the only way the work can transcend its creator and radiate its meaning further than the author himself can see or perceive.