Childhood emotions turn into art and philosophy in adulthood.
Childhood emotions turn into art and philosophy in adulthood.
―
Atrona Grizel
Conventional morality
and cliched wisdom curse pride. This also explains why people resemble each
other so much. For they have no inner values to protect them from the outside,
because they carry no values of their own. And thus, society colonizes their
mind like a jinn possessing someone.
―
Atrona Grizel
People who have
just begun to feel pain often complain that, despite being sad or angry inside,
they still wake up, get dressed, and go out as if nothing has happened, and
among other people they act as if nothing is wrong, even playful and happy.
They complain because they have not yet realized that everyone is, inevitably,
playing a role. I, too, have my pains, but I do not question going out as if
nothing has happened, because entering society already means, unavoidably,
going out wearing masks. This is an unwritten law of society. Society is a
stage, not a confessional.
―
Atrona Grizel
I don’t have much
life experience, yet spiritually I feel as if I’ve already reached the end of
my lifespan. It’s like newly entering life with a mind that has already reached
its final stage.
―
Atrona Grizel
My mind was
shaped by a culture steeped in collectivism, hierarchy, expectation, and
surveillance. In this society, people unconsciously define themselves through
family, nation, religion, and duty. Since it is built on “togetherness,” it
grants neither understanding nor value to the individual: family gatherings,
neighborly surveillance, unspoken rules, unwanted advice, “sacred” traditions,
communal rituals, and inherited belonging. Everything is graded: gender roles,
respectability, career paths, success norms, patriotic expectations, and
age-based authority. Girls grow up under pressure to be soft, coy, beautiful,
domestic, rich-husband-seeking, and to preserve their “sexual honour.” Boys
grow up under pressure to be tough, social, competitive, flirtatious,
materialistic, and extroverted. Social life is built on visibility: gossip,
judgment, magazines, and communal norms. Daily life is full of performance:
social-media theatrics, stereotypes, public morality, success culture, and
constant pressure to be “normal.” For someone allergic to superficiality and
noise, these become unbearable. A solitary and visionary consciousness grows in
such soil the way a cracked monument stands in an earthquake zone: pressured
into strange shapes.
―
Atrona Grizel
God should have
begged for my permission in order to declare himself God. He should have knelt
before me to ask whether I allow it or not. He did not do that, and by doing so
he committed the most unforgivable sin. He is just a madman who has proclaimed
himself a god. I am not an infidel because I opposed God, but God is an infidel
because he opposed me. And infidels are executed.
―
Atrona Grizel
There are two
gods in the universe: one is the one who created everything, and the other is
me, who creates my own everything out of that everything. It is clear these two
gods will clash, for they do not know one another. Thus a struggle begins in
the cosmos, each aiming to claim reality for itself. The weakness of the god
who created everything is that he brought into being minds capable of turning
all his creation into nothing, and this “design flaw” leaves him exposed. So I
overthrow him from his throne and cast him out of my mind, and in doing so the
universe ceases to shape me; instead, it is shaped by me. I become no longer
what existence demands, but existence becomes what I demand, for I have become
my own god and the sole creator of the universe.
―
Atrona Grizel
If I am powerful,
then the absence of love will be irrelevant.
―
Atrona Grizel
If I walk along
the road aimlessly, gazing about, I attract attention because of the “crime” I
have committed; they ask me whether something is wrong. They think I am
searching for something. So I wait, silently, for people to disperse and for
the moment when, relieved, I can wander freely from place to place with no
purpose at all. For I have found what they all think they have found.
―
Atrona Grizel
When I tell
people, “take refuge in your inner world,” I often forget that they usually do
not possess such a place, or at least not one fit for so comprehensive a
“lodging.” It is like a deep, boundless ocean that has never known thirst
forgetting that drought exists.
―
Atrona Grizel
People who carry
an intellectual costume seem to be saying, with every word they utter, “It’s
not like that; it’s like this.”
―
Atrona Grizel
One who fears
death does not fear themself.
―
Atrona Grizel
Why would a
recluse, alien to the conventional values of society, be sent to a private
school? Why would their family subject their soul to a day-long siege among
spoiled, insolent children of wealthy, capitalist families—who have never known
suffering, who get everything they want, whose only worry is a decline in their
social media followers? In state schools, at least, there is the possibility of
encountering every kind of person—not that every kind is there, but the
possibility exists. In conventional fee-paying schools, however, that
possibility is nearly zero. In such places, everyone was of the mindset “I’ll
pay the money and get the grade,” and I was sent right into the midst of these
types, into the rottenness of this wealth culture, forbidden to rescue myself
from it.
― Atrona
Grizel
People think
they’re insulting someone by calling them “egoist,” and in doing so they show
how unaware they are that this isn’t an insult but an entire philosophy. Ego
has nothing to do with arrogance or pride; it simply means the self. The word
“egoist” does not mean “selfish;” it means self-centered in the sense of being
rooted in one’s own being. Only one thing can capture my interest: me, me, and
again me. Even if there is no such thing as “I,” still me. In every situation,
I inevitably give priority to myself and regard myself as fundamentally
superior to everyone else; however, I do not carry the kind of arrogance that
boasts, indulges in self-admiration, or craves to be expressed. I simply exist
as primary. Yes, I am a proud egoist. But no, I am not an “egotist.”
―
Atrona Grizel
It falls to my
pride to gather up within myself all the things hated by the ordinary majority,
to magnify them, and then unleash them back upon them.
―
Atrona Grizel
This is a kind of
loneliness so deep that I have become alien even to what is already alienated.
Just as Cioran found those who can sleep soundly at night to be mediocre, I too
approach anyone capable of close human relationships with suspicion, seeing
them as both low and “boring.”
―
Atrona Grizel
I carried neither
a shattered meaning nor ideologies abandoned in absolute discontent, for I came
from a different species altogether—not of the human kind. I exist among them,
but not with them. I have not lost my faith, because I never even possessed it
in the first place. I don’t have something acquired to be disillusioned from. I
was born as nothingness itself.
―
Atrona Grizel
Men among
themselves, and women among themselves, keep information exclusively to
themselves that the opposite sex does not know and never fully learns.
―
Atrona Grizel
If a person is
being criticized in a text, and the one reading that text is in fact the very
person being criticized, even then, that person rarely takes it personally.
Suppose they are being targeted for their ordinariness. Ordinary people
constantly feel the need to justify themselves—whether internally or
externally. They cannot be “not correct.” This tendency dismisses even the
slightest possibility that there might be something wrong within themselves. As
a result, their minds become automatic in how they read texts. Their gaze is
never inward, always outward. One should have the ability to confront oneself.
―
Atrona Grizel
I once heard the
saying: “The secret of marriage lies in whether one wishes to be right or to be
happy.” While I despise both options, what if my happiness comes precisely from
being “right”?
―
Atrona Grizel
What is set free
is inevitably abused, yet what is forbidden becomes more and more attractive.
―
Atrona Grizel
To compress all
possible knowledge and every kind of insight in existence into a single mind,
and then to sever that mind’s tongue… What Cassandra once was, I am now: an
entire universe impossible to prove.
―
Atrona Grizel
I see my peers as
monkeys to be observed from afar and to be witnessed without interference. Even
if they take direct action toward me, I show no reaction; I only note this down
as the characteristics of another species.
―
Atrona Grizel
The more people
are seen as robots, the more they begin to appear as soulless
machines—precisely because they unconsciously confirm this perception
themselves.
―
Atrona Grizel
It’s not that I
don’t know how to be polite. I just don’t want to be polite. One shouldn’t be
treated politely—in a good sense. It’s all or nothing.
―
Atrona Grizel
All accessible
criticisms are the soft ones.
― Atrona Grizel