Life & Wisdom Quote by Stanislaw Lec

Ambition talks like a manifesto until the landlord shows up. Lec’s line is structured like a dignified descent: “great roles,” then “mediocre,” then the blunt, unromantic bottom rung - “the ones that pay the rent.” The comedy isn’t in the admission that money matters; it’s in how neatly he stages capitulation as a series of choices. “I choose” repeats like a magic spell meant to keep agency intact even as circumstances tighten the leash. It’s bravado as self-protection, a poet insisting he’s steering while the market does the steering for him.

The word “roles” is doing double duty. It nods to theater and public persona, but it also implicates the everyday performance required of anyone trying to survive on art. Lec, a Polish satirist-poet forged in the violence and bureaucratic absurdity of the 20th century, knew how ideals get negotiated down by systems that don’t care about your inner life. His irony is that compromise arrives dressed as professionalism: you’re still “choosing,” still curating, still telling yourself the work is the point.

The subtext is a critique of romantic myths about artistic purity. He doesn’t pose as a martyr; he punctures the pious story before someone else can. In a culture that rewards “selling out” narratives and punishes need, Lec turns necessity into punchline, and the punchline lands because it’s also a confession. The rent is the final editor, and it rarely asks whether the role is great.