There was a point in my rebellion where hatred and love coincided; both the facts which justified my indignation and the moral motives which demanded it stemmed directly from the district where I was born. This explains, too, why everything I have happened to write up to now, and probably everything I shall ever write, although I have traveled and lived abroad, is concerned solely with this same district or more precisely with the part of it which can be seen from the house where I was born–not more than thirty or forty kilometers on one side or the other…
Franciscanism and anarchy have always been the two most accessible forms of rebellion for lively spirits in our part of the world. The ashes of skepticism have never suffocated, in the hearts of those who suffered most, the ancient hope of the Kingdom of God on earth, the old expectation of charity taking the place of law, the old cream of Gioacchino de Fiore, of the “Spirituali,” of the Celestimisto.
Ignazio Silone in The Got That Failed, 86-87.