Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakiswas a Greek writer, celebrated for his novels, which include Zorba the Greek, Christ Recrucified, Captain Michalis, and The Last Temptation of Christ. He also wrote plays, travel books, memoirs and philosophical essays such as The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises...
NationalityGreek
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth18 February 1883
CityHeraklion, Greece
hate flames names
I hate all virtues based on food and bloated bellies; though food and drink are good, I'm better slaked and fed by that inhuman flame which burns in our black bowels. I like to name that flame which burns within me God!
flames light secret
Monarch of earth, I shall confess my secret craft: I've always fought to purify wild flame to light, and kindle whatever light I found to burst in flame.
book long paper
How could I, who loved life so intensely, have let myself be entangled for so long in that balderdash of books and paper blackened with ink!
games giving gold
May he be cursed on earth who gives his trust to virtue, that bankrupt crone who takes our life's pure gold and gives but bad receipts for payment in the lower world. Ah, passers-by that stroll, travelers that come and go, all that I had, I placed on virtue, and lost the game!
dream song mean
A magical portal opened inside my mind and conducted me into an astonishing world. ... Before this moment I had divined but had never known with such positiveness that the world is extremely large and that suffering and toil are the companions and fellow warriors not only of Cretan, but of every man. ... that by means of poetry all this suffering and effort could be transformed into dream; no matter how much of the ephemeral existed, poetry could immortalize it by turning it into song.
stars freedom light
How does the light of a star set out and plunge into black eternity in its immortal course? The star dies, but the light never dies; such also is the cry of freedom.
struggle men darkness
The major and almost only theme of all my work is the struggle of man with "God": the unyielding, inextinguishable struggle of the naked worm called "man" against the terrifying power and darkness of the forces within him and around him.
heart men sea
To cleave that sea [the Aegean] in the gentle autumnal season, murmuring the name of each islet, is to my mind the joy most apt to transport the heart of man into paradise.
dance said ifs
Ah, if you could dance all that you've just said, then I'd understand.