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A Novel That Does Not Uncover A Hitherto Unknown Segment Of Existence Is Immoral. Knowledge Is The Novel's Only Morality.
-Milan Kundera
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A Novel That Does

Milan Kundera
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A Novel That Does Not Uncover A Hitherto Unknown Segment Of Existence Is Immoral. Knowledge Is The Novel's Only Morality.

Understanding the Quote: "a novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence..."

This quote by Milan Kundera reflects deeply on the theme of doe. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Doe, Ethics, Morality, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Milan Kundera interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera is celebrated for insightful thoughts on doe and ethics. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

Views: 8434
Topic
Doe
Ethics
Morality
More From Milan Kundera
And I Ran After That Voice Through The Streets So As Not To Lose Sight Of The Splendid Wreath Of Bodies Gliding Over The City, And I Realized With Anguish In My Heart That They Were Flying Like Birds And I Was Falling Like A Stone, That They Had Wings And I Would Never Have Any.
Fall
Heart
Sight
The Beauty Of New York Is Unintentional; It Arose Independent Of Human Design, Like A Stalagmite Cavern.
New York
Independent
Design
The Sound Of Laughter Is Like The Vaulted Dome Of A Temple Of Happiness.
Happiness
Laughter
Joy
Our Dreams Prove That To Imagine - To Dream About Things That Have Not Happened - Is Among Mankind's Deepest Needs.
Dream
Needs
Imagine
Eroticism Is Like A Dance: One Always Leads The Other.
Inspirational
Dance
Dancing
The Purpose Of The Poetry Is Not To Dazzle Us With An Astonishing Thought, But To Make One Moment Of Existence Unforgettable And Worthy Of Unbearable Nostalgia.
Purpose
Dazzle
Unbearable
The Day After His Father Left, Franz And His Mother Went Into Town Together, And As They Left Home Franz Noticed That Her Shoes Did Not Match. He Was In A Quandary: He Wanted To Point Out The Mistake, But Was Afraid He Would Hurt Her. So, During The Two Hours They Spent Walking Through The City Together He Kept His Eyes Focused On Her Feet. It Was Then He Had His First Inkling Of What It Means To Suffer.
Mother
Hurt
Father
People Fascinated By The Idea Of Progress Never Suspect That Every Step Forward Is Also A Step On The Way To The End.
Inspirational
Life
Motivational
The Worth Of A Human Being Lies In The Ability To Extend Oneself, To Go Outside Oneself, To Exist In And For Other People.
Lying
People
Ability
A Man Possessed With Peace Is Always Smiling
Men
Always Smile
Possessed
The Only Relationship That Can Make Both Partners Happy Is One In Which Sentimentality Has No Place And Neither Partner Makes Any Claim On The Life And Freedom Of The Other.
Unbearable Lightness Of Being
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Partners
When I Was A Little Boy In Short Pants, I Dreamed About A Miraculous Ointment That Would Make Me Invisible. Then I Became An Adult, Began To Write, And Wanted To Be Successful. Now I'm Successful And Would Like To Have The Ointment That Would Make Me Invisible.
Writing
Successful
Boys
She Loved To Walk Down The Street With A Book Under Her Arm. It Had The Same Significance For Her As An Elegant Cane For The Dandy A Century Ago. It Differentiated Her From Others.
Book
Unbearable
Arms
Which Doesn't Mean, Of Course, That I'd Stopped Loving Her, That I'd Forgotten Her, Or That Her Image Had Paled; On The Contrary; In The Form Of A Quiet Nostalgia She Remained Constantly Within Me; I Longed For Her As One Longs For Something Definitively Lost.
Mean
Nostalgia
Quiet
She Knew That There Were All Kinds Of Ways To Make A Conquest And That One Of The Surest Roads To A Woman's Genitals Was Through Her Sadness.
Sadness
Way
Kind
Man Can Only Be Certain About The Present Moment. But Is That Quite True Either? Can He Really Know The Present? Is He In A Position To Make Any Judgment About It? Certainly Not. For How Can A Person With No Knowledge Of The Future Understand The Meaning Of The Present? If We Do Not Know What Future The Present Is Leading Us Toward, How Can We Say Whether This Present Is Good Or Bad, Whether It Deserves Our Concurrence, Or Our Suspicion, Or Our Hatred?
Men
Hatred
Certain
Only The Basic Situations In Life Occur Only Once, Never To Return. For A Man To Be A Man, He Must Be Fully Aware Of This Never-to-return. (p.148)
Men
Situations In Life
Return
Young Is The One That Plunges In The Future And Never Looks Back.
Looks
Plunge
Young
For A Novelist, A Given Historic Situation Is An Anthropologic Laboratory In Which He Explores His Basic Question: What Is Human Existence?
Novelists
Historic
Given
Only The Most Naive Of Questions Are Truly Serious.
Questions And Answers
Serious
Naive
Tereza Had Gone Back To Sleep; He Could Not. He Pictured Her Death. She Was Dead And Having Terrible Nightmares; But Because She Was Dead, He Was Unable To Wake Her From Them. Yes, That Is Death: Tereza Asleep, Having Terrible Nightmares, And He Unable To Wake Her.
Sleep
Gone
Nightmare
...people Don't Respect The Morning. An Alarm Clock Violently Wakes Them Up, Shatters Their Sleep Like The Blow Of An Ax, And They Immediately Surrender Themselves To Deadly Haste. Can You Tell Me What Kind Of Day Can Follow A Beginning Of Such Violence? What Happens To People Whose Alarm Clock Daily Gives Them A Small Electric Shock? Each Day They Become More Used To Violence And Less Used To Pleasure.
Morning
Sleep
Blow
I Want You To Be Weak. As Weak As I Am.
Want
Weak
I Want You
The Reason Is That Everyone Has Trouble Accepting The Fact That He Will Disappear Unheard Of And Unnoticed In An Indifferent Universe, And Everyone Wants To Make Himself Into A Universe Of Words Before It's Too Late. Once The Writer In Every Individual Comes To Life (and That Time Is Not Far Off), We Are In For An Age Of Universal Deafness And Lack Of Understanding.
Understanding
Age
Too Late
What's The Matter?" He Asked "nothing" "what Do You Want Me To Do For You?" "i Want You To Be Old. Ten Years Older. Twenty Years Older" What She Meant Was: I Want You To Be Weak. As Weak As I Am.
Years
Twenties
Want
Aren't We Living In A World Where Heedless Men Only Desire Decapitated Women?
Men
Desire
World
The History Of Music Is Mortal, But The Idiocy Of The Guitar Is Eternal.
Music
Guitar
Idiocy
The Characters In My Novels Are My Own Unrealised Possibilities. That Is Why I Am Equally Fond Of Them All And Equally Horrified By Them. Each One Has Crossed A Border That I Myself Have Circumvented.
Character
Borders
Possibility
Those Boobs Of Yours Are Ubiquitous - Like God!
His Overriding Life Necessity Was Not Love, It Was His Profession…he Had Come To Medicine Not By Coincidence Or Calculation But By A Deep Inner Desire. Insofar As It Is Possible To Divide People Into Categories, The Surest Criterion Is The Deep-seated Desires That Orient Them To One Or Another Lifelong Activity. Every Frenchman Is Different. But All The Actors The World Over Are Similar.
Medicine
People
Desire
...no One Can Do A Thing About Feelings, They Exist And There's No Way To Censor Them. We Can Reproach Ourselves For Some Action, For A Remark, But Not For A Feeling, Quite Simply Because We Have No Control At All Over It.
Feelings
Way
Action
Do You Realize That People Don't Know How To Read Kafka Simply Because They Want To Decipher Him? Instead Of Letting Themselves Be Carried Away By His Unequaled Imagination, They Look For Allegories - And Come Up With Nothing But Clichés: Life Is Absurd (or It Is Not Absurd), God Is Beyond Reach (or Within Reach), Etc. You Can Understand Nothing About Art, Particularly Modern Art, If You Do Not Understand That Imagination Is A Value In Itself.
Art
People
Imagination
Is Not Parody The Eternal Lot Of Man?
Men
Parody
Eternal
A Man Who Loses His Privacy Loses Everything. And A Man Who Gives It Up Of His Own Free Will Is A Monster.
Men
Giving
Monsters
No Act Is Of Itself Either Good Or Bad. Only Its Place In The Order Of Things Makes It Good Or Bad.
Order
She Knew, Of Course That She Was Being Supremely Unfair, That Franz Was The Best Man She Ever Had- He Was Intelligent, He Understood Her Paintings, He Was Handsome And Good-but The More She Thought About It, The More She Longed To Ravish His Intelligence, Defile His Kindheartedness, And Violate His Powerless Strength
Intelligent
Men
Handsome
Indeed, The Only Truly Serious Questions Are Ones That Even A Child Can Formulate. Only The Most Naive Of Questions Are Truly Serious.
Children
Questions And Answers
Serious
La Memoria No Guarda Películas, Guarda Fotografías.
Because Beyond Their Practical Function, All Gestures Have A Meaning That Exceeds The Intention Of Those Who Make Them; When People In Bathing Suits Fling Themselves Into The Water, It Is Joy Itself That Shows In The Gesture, Notwithstanding Any Sadness The Divers May Actually Feel. When Someone Jumps Into The Water Fully Clothed, It Is Another Thing Entirely: The Only Person Who Jumps Into The Water Fully Clothed Is A Person Trying To Drown; And A Person Trying To Drown Does Not Dive Headfirst; He Lets Himself Fall: Thus Speaks The Immemorial Language Of Gestures.
Fall
Sadness
Water
I Was Not A Hypocrite, With One Real Face And Several False Ones. I Had Several Faces Because I Was Young And Didn't Know Who I Was Or Wanted To Be.
Real
Hypocrite
Faces
I Have To Lie, If I Don't Want To Take Madmen Seriously And Become A Madman Myself
Lying
Want
Madmen
We Can Never Know What To Want, Because, Living Only One Life, We Can Neither Compare It With Our Previous Lives Nor Perfect It In Our Lives To Come.
Perfect
Want
Unbearable Lightness Of Being
The Very Beginning Of Genesis Tells Us That God Created Man In Order To Give Him Dominion Over Fish And Fowl And All Creatures. Of Course, Genesis Was Written By A Man, Not A Horse.
Horse
Men
Order
Speak Truth To Power.
Speak
Speak The Truth
Graphomania (a Mania For Writing Books) Inevitably Takes On Epidemic Proportions When A Society Develops To The Point Of Creating Three Basic Conditions: - (1) An Elevated Level Of General Well Being Which Allows People To Devote Themselves To Useless Activities (2) A High Degree Of Social Atomization And , As A Consequence, A General Isolation Of Individuals; (3) The Absence Of Dramatic Social Changes In The Nation's Internal Life.
Book
Writing
Epidemics
Revolution In Love’. Can You Tell Me What You Mean By That? Do You Want Free Love As Against Bourgeois Marriage, Or Monogamy As Against Bourgeois Promiscuity?
Mean
Want
Revolution
Suspending Moral Judgment Is Not The Immorality Of The Novel; It Is Its Morality. The Morality That Stands Against The Ineradicable Human Habit Of Judging Instantly, Ceaselessly, And Everyone; Of Judging Before, And In The Absence Of, Understanding. From The View­point Of The Novel's Wisdom, That Fervid Readiness To Judge Is The Most Detestable Stupidity, The Most Pernicious Evil.
Views
Evil
Judging
Two People In Love, Alone, Isolated From The World, That's Beautiful.
Love
Beautiful
Two
To Put It Another Way, Every Love Relationship Is Based Upon Unwritten Conventions Rashly Agreed Upon By The Lovers During The First Weeks Of Their Love. On The One Hand, They Are Living A Sort Of Dream; On The Other, Without Realizing It, They Are Drawing Up The Fine Print Of Their Contracts Like The Most Hard-nosed Of Lawyers. O Lovers! Be Wary During Those Perilous First Days! If You Serve The Other Party Breakfast In Bed, You Will Be Obliged To Continue Same In Perpetuity Or Face Charges Of Animosity And Treason!
Dream
Party
Drawing
Nothing Is More Repugnant To Me Than Brotherly Feelings Grounded In The Common Baseness People See In One Another.
People
Feelings
Common
To Laugh Is To Live Profoundly.
Laughing
Chaos
Art Arises From Sources Other Than Logic." (p.32)
Art
Logic
Source
Mysticism And Exaggeration Go Together. A Mystic Must Not Fear Ridicule If He Is To Push All The Way To The Limits Of Humility Or The Limits Of Delight.
Humility
Exaggeration Is
Together
When The Heart Speaks, The Mind Finds It Indecent To Object.
Inspirational
Heart
Mind
Totalitarianism Is Neither Left Nor Right, And Within Its Empire Both Will Perish. I Was Never A Believer, But After Seeing Czech Catholics Persecuted During The Stalinist Terror, I Felt The Deepest Solidarity With Them. What Separated Us, The Belief In God, Was Secondary To What United Us. In Prague, They Hanged The Socialists And The Priests. Thus A Fraternity Of The Hanged Was Born.
Catholic
Prague
Empires
Solitude: A Sweet Absence Of Looks.
Sweet
Loneliness
Being Alone
How Goodness Heightens Beauty!
Beauty
Body Image
Goodness
Dogs Do Not Have Many Advantages Over People, But One Of Them Is Extremely Important: Euthanasia Is Not Forbidden By Law In Their Case; Animals Have The Right To A Merciful Death.
Dog
Animal
Law
True Human Goodness, In All Its Purity And Freedom, Can Come To The Fore Only When Its Recipient Has No Power.
Animal
Compassion
Unbearable Lightness Of Being
The Greater The Ambiguity, The Greater The Pleasure.
Pleasure
Ambiguity
Greater
Love Is A Continual Interrogation. I Don’t Know Of A Better Definition Of Love.
Love Is
Definitions
Definition Of Love
For Everyone Is Pained By The Thought Of Disappearing, Unheard And Unseen, Into An Indifferent Universe, And Because Of That Everyone Wants, While There Is Still Time, To Turn Himself Into A Universe Of Words.
Unseen
Want
Disappear
Perhaps If They Had Stayed Together Longer, Sabina And Franz Would Have Begun To Understand The Words They Used. Gradually, Timorously, Their Vocabularies Would Have Come Together, Like Bashful Lovers, And The Music Of One Would Have Begun To Intersect With The Music Of The Other. But It Was Too Late Now.
Vocabulary
Together
Too Late
Sad Company Is Bad Company.
Bad Company
Company
I Understand You, And I Shall Not Attempt To Make You Change Your Mind. I Am Too Old To Want To Improve The World. I Have Told You What I Think, And That Is All. I Shall Remain Your Friend Even If You Act Contrary To My Convictions, And I Shall Help You Even If I Disagree With You.
Thinking
Mind
World
The Bloody Massacre In Bangladesh Quickly Covered Over The Memory Of The Russian Invasion Of Czechoslovakia, The Assassination Of Allende Drowned Out The Groans Of Bangladesh, The War In The Sinai Desert Made People Forget Allende, The Cambodian Massacre Made People Forget Sinai, And So On And So Forth Until Ultimately Everyone Lets Everything Be Forgotten.
Memories
War
People
The Phrase "it's Absolutely The Same With Me, I..." Seems To Be An Approving Echo, A Way Of Continuing The Other's Thought, But That Is An Illusion: In Reality It Is A Brute Revolt Against A Brutal Violence, An Effort To Free Our Own Ear From Bondage And To Occupy The Enemy's Ear By Force. Because All Of Man's Life Among His Kind Is Nothing Other Than A Battle To Seize The Ear Of Others.
Reality
Men
Echoes
Speed Is The Form Of Ecstasy The Technical Revolution Has Bestowed On Man. As Opposed To A Motorcyclist, The Runner Is Always Present In His Body, Forever Required To Think About His Blisters, His Exhaustion; When He Runs He Feels His Weight, His Age, More Conscious Than Ever Of Himself And Of His Time Of Life. This All Changes When Man Delegates The Faculty Of Speed To A Machine: From Then On, His Own Body Is Outside The Process, And He Gives Over To A Speed That Is Noncorporeal, Nonmaterial, Pure Speed, Speed Itself, Ecstasy Speed.
Running
Men
Thinking
Memory Does Not Make Films, It Makes Photographs.
Memories
Doe
Film
Common European Thought Is The Fruit Of The Immense Toil Of Translators. Without Translators, Europe Would Not Exist; Translators Are More Important Than Members Of The European Parliament.
Europe
Important
Toil
Tell Me, Where In Life Is There A Value That Would Make Us Consider Suicide Uncalled For On Principle! Love? Or Friendship? I Guarantee That Friendship Is Not A Bit Less Fickle Than Love And It Is Impossible To Build Anything On It. Self-love? I Wish It Were Possible.
Suicide
Self
Guarantees That
Metaphors Are Dangerous. Love Begins With A Metaphor
Love Is
Unbearable Lightness Of Being
Metaphor
Living Is Being Happy: Seeing, Hearing, Touching, Drinking, Eating, Urinating, Defecating, Diving Into The Water And Gazing At The Sky, Laughing And Crying.
Drinking
Sky
Water
A Man Able To Think Isn't Defeated - Even When He Is Defeated.
Men
Thinking
Able
You Can Understand Nothing About Art, Particularly Modern Art, If You Do Not Understand That Imagination Is A Value In Itself.
Art
Imagination
Modern
We Live Everything As It Comes, Without Warning, Like An Actor Going On Cold.
Actors
Warning
Rehearsal
Mankind's True Moral Test, Its Fundamental Test (which Lies Deeply Buried From View), Consists Of Its Attitude Towards Those Who Are At Its Mercy: Animals. And In This Respect Mankind Has Suffered A Fundamental Debacle, A Debacle So Fundamental That All Others Stem From It.
Love
Peace
Nature
At A Time When History Made Its Way Slowly, The Few Events Were Easily Remembered And Woven Into A Backdrop, Known To Everyone, Before Which Private Life Unfolded The Gripping Show Of Its Adventures. Nowadays, Time Moves Forward At A Rapid Pace. Forgotten Overnight, A Historic Event Glistens The Next Day Like The Morning Dew And Thus Is No Longer The Backdrop To A Narrator's Tale But Rather An Amazing Adventure Enacted Against The Background Of The Over-familiar Banality Of Private Life.
Morning
Moving
Adventure
Beauty Is A Rebellion Against Time.
Rebellion
The Basis Of The Self Is Not Thought But Suffering, Which Is The Most Fundamental Of All Feelings. While It Suffers, Not Even A Cat Can Doubt Its Unique And Uninterchangeable Self. In Intense Suffering The World Disappears And Each Of Us Is Alone With His Self. Suffering Is The University Of Ego-centrism.
Cat
Unique
Self
When Graves Are Covered With Stones, The Dead Can No Longer Get Out. But The Dead Can't Go Out Anyway! What Difference Does It Make Whether They're Covered With Soil Or Stones?
Differences
Doe
Stones
The Novelist's Ambition Is Not To Do Something Better Than His Predecessors But To See What They Did Not See, Say What They Did Not Say.
Writing
Ambition
Creative
This Was Exactly What The Girl Had Most Dreaded All Her Life And Had Scrupulously Avoided Until Now: Lovemaking Without Emotion Or Love. She Knew That She Had Crossed The Forbidden Boundary, But She Proceeded Across It Without Objections And As A Full Participant; Only Somewhere, Far Off In A Corner Of Her Consciousness, Did She Feel Horror At The Thought That She Had Never Known Such Pleasure, Never So Much Pleasure As At This Moment--beyond That Boundary.
Girl
Emotion
Consciousness
Happiness Is The Longing For Repetition.
Happiness
Laughter
Joy
Radio... Force-feeds Us Music... Everywhere And All The Time... Sewage-water Music In Which Music Is Dying.
Water
Dying
Radio
For Existential Mathematics, Which Does Not Exist, Would Probably Propose This Equation: The Value Of Coincidence Equals The Degree Of Its Improbability.
Degrees
Doe
Coincidence
I Am Not In Favor Of Imposing Happiness On People. Everyone Has A Right To His Bad Wine, To His Stupidity, And To His Dirty Fingernails.
Dirty
Wine
People
Mankind's Real Moral Test, A Test So Radical And So Deep That It Escapes Our Gaze, Is Probably The One Of Its Relations With Those That Are The Most At Its Mercy; The Animals.
Real
Animal
Tests
Flirting Is A Promise Of Sexual Intercourse Without A Guarantee.
Flirting
Promise
Guarantees
But Man, Because He Has Only One Life To Live, Cannot Conduct Experiments To Test Whether To Follow His Passion (compassion) Or Not.
Passion
Men
Tests
A Route Differs From A Road Not Only Because It Is Solely Intended For Vehicles, But Also Because It Is Merely A Line That Connects One Point With Another. A Route Has No Meaning In Itself; Its Meaning Derives Entirely From The Two Points That It Connects. A Road Is A Tribute To Space. Every Stretch Of Road Has Meaning In Itself And Invites Us To Stop. A Route Is The Triumphant Devaluation Of Space, Which Thanks To It Has Been Reduced To A Mere Obstacle To Human Movement And A Waste Of Time.
Travel
Two
Space
And Therein Lies The Whole Of Man's Plight. Human Time Does Not Turn In A Circle; It Runs Ahead In A Straight Line. That Is Why Man Cannot Be Happy: Happiness Is The Longing For Repetition.
Happiness
Running
Time
Metaphors Are Dangerous. Love Begins With A Metaphor. Which Is To Say, Love Begins At The Point When A Woman Enters Her First Word Into Our Poetic Memory.
Love
Dream
Memories
My Lifelong Ambition Has Been To Unite The Utmost Seriousness Of Question With The Utmost Lightness Of Form.
Ambition
Form
Lifelong
This Is The Real And The Only Reason For Friendship: To Provide A Mirror So The Other Person Can Contemplate His Image From The Past, Which, Without The Eternal Blah-blah Of Memories Between Pals, Would Long Ago Have Disappeared.
Memories
Real
Past
Kitsch Excludes Everything From Its Purview Which Is Essentially Unacceptable In Human Existence.
Kitsch
Unbearable Lightness Of Being
Existence
The Border Between Good And Evil Is Terribly Fuzzy.
Evil
Borders
Fuzzy
The Combination Of A Frivolous Form And A Serious Subject Immediately Unmasks The Truth About Our Dramas.
Drama
Serious Subjects
Form
Cemeteries In Bohemia Are Like Gardens. The Graves Are Covered With Grass And Colourful Flowers. Modest Tombstones Are Lost In The Greenery. When The Sun Goes Down, The Cemetery Sparkles With Tiny Candles... No Matter How Brutal Life Becomes, Peace Always Reigns In The Cemetery. Even In Wartime, Even In Hitler's Time, Even In Stalin's Time.
Tombstone
Flower
Garden
Oh Lovers! Be Careful In Those Dangerous First Days! Once You've Brought Breakfast In Bed You'll Have To Bring It Forever, Unless You Want To Be Accused Of Lovelessness And Betrayal.
Betrayal
Forever
Bed
He Suddenly Recalled From Plato's Symposium: People Were Hermaphrodites Until God Split Then In Two, And Now All The Halves Wander The World Over Seeking One Another. Love Is The Longing For The Half Of Ourselves We Have Lost.
Plato
Philosophy
Love Is
The Novelist Teaches The Reader To Comprehend The World As A Question. There Is Wisdom And Tolerance In That Attitude. In A World Built On Sacrosanct Certainties The Novel Is Dead.
Attitude
Tolerance
World
Extremism Means Borders Beyond Which Life Ends, And A Passion For Extremism, In Art And In Politics, Is A Veiled Longing For Death.
Art
Passion
Mean
The River Flowed From Century To Century, And Human Affairs Play Themselves Out On Its Banks. Play Themselves Out To Be Forgotten The Next Day, While The River Flows On.
Play
Rivers
Next Day
To Rebel Against Being Born A Woman Seemed As Foolish To Her As To Take Pride In It.
Women
Pride
Rebel
Beauty Has Long Since Disappeared. It Has Slipped Beneath The Surface Of The Noise, The Noise Of Words, Sunk Deep As Atlantis. The Only Thing Left Of It Is The Word, Whose Meaning Loses Clarity From Year To Year.
Years
Long
Noise
Until That Time, Her Betrayals Had Filled Her With Excitement And Joy, Because They Opened Up New Paths To New Adventures Of Betrayal. But What If The Paths Came To An End? One Could Betray One's Parents, Husband, Country, Love, But When Parents, Husband, Country, And Love Were Gone - What Was Left To Betray?
Country
Husband
Betrayal
Jealousy Isn't A Pleasant Quality, But If It Isn't Overdone (and If It's Combined With Modesty), Apart From Its Inconvenience There's Even Something Touching About It.
Jealousy
Touching
Quality
Sleep In My Arms. Like A Baby Bird. Like A Broom Among Brooms... In A Broom Closet. Like A Tiny Parrot. Like A Whistle. Like A Little Song. A Song Sung By A Forest... Within A Forest... A Thousand Years Ago.
Song
Baby
Sleep
People Are Going Deaf Because Music Is Played Louder And Louder, But Because They're Going Deaf, It Has To Be Played Louder Still.
Reality
People
Deaf
To Sit With A Dog On A Hillside On A Glorious Afternoon Is To Be Back In Eden, Where Doing Nothing Was Not Boring - It Was Peace.
Letting Go
Dog
Stress
The Brain Appears To Possess A Special Area Which We Might Call Poetic Memory And Which Records Everything That Charms Or Touches Us, That Makes Our Lives Beautiful ... Love Begins At The Point When A Woman Enters Her First Word Into Our Poetic Memory.
Beautiful
Memories
Brain
Merely By Being Born Intelligent, You Right Away Find Yourself In Absolute Exile.
Intelligent
Finding Yourself
Born
The Love Between Dog And Man Is Idyllic, Dogs Were Never Expelled From Paradise.
Dog
Love Is
Men
Love Is A Battle, And I Plan To Go On Fighting. To The End.
Fighting
Love Is
Battle
When We Ignore The Body, We Are More Easily Victimized By It.
Body
When You Sit Face To Face With Someone Who Is Pleasant, Respectful, And Polite, You Have Hard Time Reminding Yourself That Nothing He Says Is True/sincere.
Hard Times
Faces
Sincere
The Eye... The Point Where A Person's Identity Is Concentrated.
Eye
Identity
Persons
Dogs Are Our Link To Paradise.
Dog
Pet
Links
To Die; To Decide To Die; That's Much Easier For An Adolescent Than For An Adult. What? Doesn't Death Strip An Adolescent Of A Far Larger Portion Of Future? Certainly It Does, But For A Young Person, The Future Is A Remote, Abstract, Unreal Thing He Doesn't Really Believe In.
Believe
Adults
Doe
The Struggle Of Man Against Power Is The Struggle Of Memory Against Forgetting.
Strength
Memories
Struggle
Immortality Is A Ridiculous Illusion, An Empty Word, A Butterfly Net Chasing The Wind.
Butterfly
Wind
Ridiculous
The Moment Kafka Attracts More Attenetion Than Joseph K., Kafka's Posthumous Death Begins.
Moments
Posthumous
No Matter How Much We Scorn It, Kitsch Is An Integral Part Of The Human Condition.
Kitsch
Matter
Human Condition
Bacon's Portraits Are An Interrogation On The Limits Of The Self. Up To What Degree Of Distortion Does An Individual Still Remain Himself? To What Degree Of Distortion Does A Beloved Person Still Remain A Beloved Person? For How Long Does A Cherished Face Growing Remote Through Illness, Through Madness, Through Hatred, Through Death Still Remain Recognizable? Where Is The Border Beyond Which A Self Ceases To Be A Self?
Self
Long
Hatred
While People Are Fairly Young And The Musical Composition Of Their Lives Is Still In Its Opening Bars, They Can Go About Writing It Together And Sharing Motifs (the Way Tomas And Sabina Exchanged The Motif Of The Bowler Hat), But If They Meet When They Are Older, Like Franz And Sabina, Their Musical Compositions Are More Or Less Complete, And Every Motif, Every Object, Every Word Means Something Different To Each Of Them.
Writing
Mean
People
Seeing Is Limited By Two Borders: Strong Light, Which Blinds, And Total Darkness.
Strong
Two
Light
Given The Nature Of The Human Couple, The Love Of A Man And A Woman Is A Priori Inferior To That Which Can Exist (at Least In The Best Instances) In The Love Between Man And Dog...it Is A Completely Selfless Love.
Dog
Couple
Men
If Excitement Is A Mechanism Our Creator Uses For His Own Amusement, Love Is Something That Belongs To Us Alone And Enables Us To Flee The Creator. Love Is Our Freedom. Love Lies Beyond "es Muss Sein!
Lying
Love Is
Use
In The Sunset Of Dissolution, Everything Is Illuminated By The Aura Of Nostalgia, Even The Guillotine.
Sunset
Auras
Unbearable
Indeed, The Only Truly Serious Questions Are Ones That Even A Child Can Formulate. Only The Most Naive Of Questions Are Truly Serious. They Are The Questions With No Answers. A Question With No Answer Is A Barrier That Cannot Be Breached. In Other Words, It Is Questions With No Answers That Set The Limit Of Human Possibilities, Describe The Boundaries Of Human Existence.
Children
Questions And Answers
Limits
The Stupidity Of People Comes From Having An Answer For Everything. The Wisdom Of The Novel Comes From Having A Question For Everything. The Novelist Teaches The Reader To Comprehend The World As A Question. There Is Wisdom And Tolerance In That Attitude. In A World Built On Sacrosanct Certainties The Novel Is Dead.
Attitude
People
Stupidity
Laughing Deeply Is Living Deeply.
Happiness
Laughing
...[p]eople Who Shout Joy From The Rooftops Are Often The Saddest Of All... (p.24)
Joy
Rooftops
Saddest
There Is A Certain Part Of All Of Us That Lives Outside Of Time. Perhaps We Become Aware Of Our Age Only At Exceptional Moments And Most Of The Time We Are Ageless.
Age
Moments
Certain
Anyone Who Thinks That The Communist Regimes Of Central Europe Are Exclusively The Work Of Criminals Is Overlooking A Basic Truth: The Criminal Regimes Were Made Not By Criminals But By Enthusiasts Convinced They Had Discovered The Only Road To Paradise. They Defended That Road So Valiantly That They Were Forced To Execute Many People. Later It Became Clear That There Was No Paradise, That The Enthusiasts Were Therefore Murderers.
Thinking
Europe
People
We All Reject Out Of Hand The Idea That The Love Of Our Life May Be Something Light Or Weightless; We Presume Our Love Is What Must Be, That Without It Our Life Would No Longer Be The Same; We Feel That Beethoven Himself, Gloomy And Awe-inspiring, Is Playing The “es Muss Sein!” To Our Own Great Love.
Love Is
Light
Hands
And What Can Life Be Worth If The First Rehearsal For Life Is Life Itself?
Rehearsal
Firsts
Unbearable
If We Cannot Accept The Importance Of The World, Which Considers Itself Important, If In The Midst Of That World Our Laughter Finds No Echo, We Have But One Choice: To Take The World As A Whole And Make It The Object Of Our Game; To Turn It Into A Toy
Laughter
Echoes
Games
Human Life Occurs Only Once, And The Reason We Cannot Determine Which Of Our Decisions Are Good And Which Bad Is That In A Given Situation We Can Make Only One Decision; We Are Not Granted A Second, Third, Or Fourth Life In Which To Compare Various Decisions.
Decision
Granted
Reason
No One Can Give Anyone Else The Gift Of The Idyll; Only An Animal Can Do So, Because Only Animals Were Not Expelled From Paradise. The Love Between Dog And Man Is Idyllic. It Knows No Conflicts, No Hair-raising Scenes; It Knows No Development.
Dog
Animal
Men
For The Body Is Temporal And Thought Is Eternal And The Shimmering Essence Of Flame Is An Image Of Thought.
Flames
Essence
Body
Business Only Has Two Functions - Innovation And Marketing.
Two
Innovation
Marketing
The First Step In Liquidating A People Is To Erase Its Memory. Destroy Its Books, Its Culture, Its History. Then Have Somebody Write New Books, Manufacture A New Culture, Invent A New History. Before Long That Nation Will Begin To Forget What It Is And What It Was... The Struggle Of Man Against Power Is The Struggle Of Memory Against Forgetting.
Memories
Struggle
Book
...he Took A Look At The Blond Girl's Eyes And Knew That He Must Not Take Part In The Rigged Game In Which The Ephemeral Passes For The Eternal And The Small For The Big, That He Must Not Take Part In The Rigged Game Called Love.
Girl
Eye
Games
Only From The Perspective Of Such A Utopia Is It Possible To Use The Concepts Of Pessimism And Optimism With Full Justification: An Optimist Is Someone Who Thinks That On Planet Number Five The History Of Mankind Will Be Less Bloody. A Pessimist Is One Who Thinks Otherwise.
Thinking
Numbers
Optimism
There Are Moments In Life When A Man Retreats Defensively, When He Must Give Ground, When He Must Surrender Less Important Positions In Order To Protect The More Important Ones. But Should It Come To The Very Last, The Most Important One, At This Point A Man Must Halt And Stand Firm If He Doesn't Want To Begin Life All Over Again With Idle Hands And A Feeling Of Being Shipwrecked.
Men
Hands
Order
From Tender Youth We Are Told By Father And Teacher That Betrayal Is The Most Heinous Offence Imaginable. But What Is Betrayal?…betrayal Means Breaking Ranks And Breaking Off Into The Unknown. Sabina Knew Of Nothing More Magnificent Than Going Off Into The Unknown.
Teacher
Betrayal
Father
Her Kitsch Was The Image Of Home, All Peace, Quiet, And Harmony, And Ruled By A Loving Mother And A Wise Father. It Was An Image That Took Shape In Her After The Death Of Her Parents. The Less Her Life Resembled The Sweetest Of Dreams, The More Sensitive She Was To Its Magic, And More Than Once She Shed Tears When The Ungrateful Daughter In A Sentimental Film Embraced The Neglected Father As The Windows Of The Happy Family's House Shone Out Into The Dying Day.
Wise
Mother
Dream
We Can Never Establish With Certainty What Part Of Our Relations With Others Is The Result Of Our Emotions - Love, Antipathy, Charity, Or Malice - And What Part Is Predetermined By The Constant Power Play Among Individuals.
Love
Inspirational
Relationship
The Man Hunched Over His Motorcycle Can Focus Only On The Present... He Is Caught In A Fragment Of Time Cut Off From Both The Past And The Future... He Has No Fear, Because The Source Of Fear Is In The Future, And A Person Freed Of The Future Has Nothing To Fear.
Inspirational
Time
Freedom
The Girl Was Grateful To The Young Man For Every Bit Of Flattery; She Wanted To Linger For A Moment In Its Warmth And So She Said, 'you're Very Good At Lying.' 'do I Look Like A Liar?' 'you Look Like You Enjoy Lying To Women,' Said The Girl, And Into Her Words There Crept Unawares A Touch Of The Old Anxiety, Because She Really Did Believe That Her Young Man Enjoyed Lying To Women.
Girl
Liars
Lying
...in Our Time Art Is Encrusted With A Noisy, Opaque, Logorrhea Of Theory That Prevents A Work From Coming Into Direct, Media Free, Non-interpreted Contact With Its Viewer (its Reader, Its Listener)
Art
Media
Opaque
Darling, My Darling, Don't Think That I Don't Love You Or That I Didn't Love You, But It's Precisely Because I Love You That I Couldn't Have Become What I Am Today If You Were Still Here. It's Impossible To Have A Child And Despise The World As It Is, Because That's The World We've Put The Child Into. The Child Makes Us Care About The World, Think About It's Future, Willingly Join In Its Racket And Its Turmoils, Take Its Incurable Stupidity Seriously.
Children
Love You
Thinking
The Emotion Of Love Gives All Of Us A Misleading Illusion Of Knowing The Other.
Knowing
Giving
Emotion
Just Imagine Living In A World Without Mirrors. You'd Dream About Your Face And Imagine It As An Outer Reflection Of What Is Inside You. And Then, When You Reached Forty, Someone Put A Mirror Before You For The First Time In Your Life. Imagine Your Fright! You'd See The Face Of A Stranger. And You'd Know Quite Clearly What You Are Unable To Grasp: Your Face Is Not You.
Dream
Reflection
Mirrors
High Culture Is Nothing But A Child Of That European Perversion Called History, The Obsession We Have With Going Forward, With Considering The Sequence Of Generations A Relay Race In Which Everyone Surpasses His Predecessor, Only To Be Surpassed By His Successor. Without This Relay Race Called History There Would Be No European Art And What Characterizes It: A Longing For Originality, A Longing For Change. Robespierre, Napoleon, Beethoven, Stalin, Picasso, They're All Runners In The Relay Race, They All Belong To The Same Stadium.
Art
Children
Race
People Derived Too Much Pleasure From Seeing Their Fellow Man Morally Humiliated To Spoil That Pleasure By Hearing Out An Explanation.
Men
People
Fellow Man
In The Realm Of Totalitarian Kitsch, All Answers Are Given In Advance And Preclude Any Questions.
Answers
Kitsch
Unbearable Lightness Of Being
Unlike The Puerile Loyalty To A Conviction, Loyalty To A Friend Is A Virtue - Perhaps The Only Virtue, The Last Remaining One.
Loyalty
Lasts
Virtue
Disgust At Having To Talk About Oneself Is What Distinguishes Novelistic Talent From Lyric Talent.
Talent
Disgusting
Oneself
When We Want To Give Expression To A Dramatic Situation In Our Lives, We Tend To Use Metaphors Of Heaviness. We Say That Something Has Become A Great Burden To Us. We Either Bear The Burden Or Fail And Go Down With It, We Struggle With It, Win Or Lose. And Sabina - What Had Come Over Her? Nothing. She Had Left A Man Because She Felt Like Leaving Him. Had He Persecuted Her? Had He Tried To Take Revenge On Her? No. Her Drama Was A Drama Not Of Heaviness But Of Lightness. What Fell To Her Lot Was Not The Burden, But The Unbearable Lightness Of Being.
Revenge
Drama
Struggle
Pain Doesn't Listen To Reason, It Has It's Own Reason, Which Is Not Reasonable
Pain
Reason
Reasonable
If Our Planet Has Seen Some Eighty Billion People It Is Difficult To Suppose Hat Every Individual Has Had His Or Her Own Repertory Of Gestures. Arithmetically, It Is Simply Impossible. Without The Slightest Doubt, There Are Far Fewer Gestures In The World Than There Are Individuals. That Finding Leads Us To A Shocking Conclusion: A Gesture Is More Individual Than An Individual. We Could Put It In The Form Of An Aphorism: Many People, Few Gestures.
People
Doubt
World
To Be Mortal Is The Most Basic Human Experience, And Yet Man Has Never Been Able To Accept It, Grasp It, And Behave Accordingly. Man Doesn't Know How To Be Mortal. And When He Dies, He Doesn't Even Know How To Be Dead.
Men
Able
Accepting
But Which Was The Real Me? Let Me Be Perfectly Honest: I Was A Man Of Many Faces. (p.33)
Real
Men
Faces
If I Had Two Lives, In One Life I Could Invite Her To Stay At My Place, And In The Second Life I Could Kick Her Out. Then I Could Compare And See Which Had Been The Best Thing To Do. But We Only Live Once. Life's So Light. Like An Outline We Can't Ever Fill In Or Correct... Make Any Better. It's Frightening".
Light
Two
Compare
There Is No Perfection Only Life
Perfection
Any New Possibility That Existence Acquires, Even The Least Likely, Transforms Everything About Existence.
Possibility
Existence
Acquire
Noise Has One Advantage. It Drowns Out Words.
Noise
Advantage
Without The Meditative Background That Is Criticism, Works Become Isolated Gestures, Historical Accidents, Soon Forgotten.
Historical
Criticism
Gestures
Remembering Our Past, Carrying It Around With Us Always, May Be The Necessary Requirement For Maintaining, As They Say, The Wholeness Of The Self. To Ensure That The Self Doesn’t Shrink, To See That It Holds On To Its Volume, Memories Have To Be Watered Like Potted Flowers, And The Watering Calls For Regular Contact With The Witnesses Of The Past, That Is To Say, With Friends. They Are Our Mirror; Our Memory; We Ask Nothing Of Them But That They Polish The Mirror From Time To Time So We Can Look At Ourselves In It.
Memories
Flower
Past
Believe Me, Nothing Is More Beautiful Than To Carry Out Crazy Ideas. I'd Like My Whole Life To Be One Single Crazy Idea.
Beautiful
Crazy
Believe
The Characters In My Novels Are My Own Unrealized Possibilities. That Is Why I Am Equally Fond Of Them All And Equally Horrified By Them. Each One Has Crossed A Border That I Myself Have Circumvented. It Is That Crossed Border (the Border Beyond Which My Own "i" Ends) Which Attracts Me Most. For Beyond That Border Begins The Secret The Novel Asks About. This Novel Is Not The Author's Confession; It Is An Investigation Of Human Life In The Trap The World Has Become.
Courage
Character
Discovery
Facts Mean Little Compared To Attitudes. To Contradict Rumor Or Sentiment Is As Futile As Arguing Against A Believer's Faith In The Immaculate Conception. You Have Simply Become A Victim Of Faith, Comrade Assistant.
Attitude
Mean
Rumor
The Novelist Teaches The Reader To Comprehend The World As A Question.
Novelists
World
Teach
God Has Been Kind To Dogs In No Putting A Sense Of Beauty Into Their Heads.
Dog
Kind
Has Beens
Even At The Age Of Eight She Would Fall Asleep By Pressing One Hand Into The Other And Making Believe She Was Holding The Hand Of The Man Whom She Loved, The Man Of Her Life. So If In Her Sleep She Pressed Tomas Hand With Such Tenacity, We Can Understand Why: She Had Been Training Since Childhood.
Believe
Fall
Sleep
For He Was Aware Of The Great Secret Of Life: Women Don't Look For Handsome Men. Women Look For Men Who Have Had Beautiful Women. Having An Ugly Mistress Is Therefore A Fatal Mistake.
Beautiful
Mistake
Men
We Go Through The Present Blindfolded... Only Later, When The Blindfold Is Removed And We Examine The Past, Do We Realize What We've Been Through And Understand What It Means.
Mean
Past
Realizing
Sensuality Is The Total Mobilization Of The Senses: An Individual Observes His Partner Intently, Straining To Catch Every Sound.
Sound
Individual
Partners
The Young Man Called The Waiter And Paid. Then He Got Up And Said To The Girl: 'we're Going.' Where To?' The Girl Feigned Surprise. Don't Ask, Just Come On,' Said The Young Man. Is That Any Way To Talk To Me?' It's The Way I Talk To Whores.
Girl
Men
Way
We Pass Through The Present With Our Eyes Blindfolded. We Are Permitted Merely To Sense And Guess At What We Are Actually Experiencing. Only Later When The Cloth Is Untied Can We Glance At The Past And Find Out What We Have Experienced And What Meaning It Has.
Eye
Past
Glances
The Best Actors Do Not Let The Wheels Show.
Funny
Humorous
Acting
Between The Approximation Of The Idea And The Precision Of Reality There Was A Small Gap Of The Unimaginable, And It Was This Hiatus That Gave Him No Rest.
Reality
Ideas
Gaps
Aesthetic Racism Is Almost Always A Sign Of Inexperience. Those Who Have Not Made Their Way Far Enough Into The World Of Amorous Delights Judge Women Only By What Can Be Seen. But Those Who Really Know Women Understand That The Eye Reveals Only A Minute Fraction Of What A Woman Can Offer Us. When God Bade Mankind Be Fruitful And Multiply, Doctor, He Was Thinking Of The Ugly As Well As Of The Beautiful. I Am Convinced I Might Add, That The Aesthetic Criterion Does Not Come From God But From The Devil. In Paradise No Distinction Was Made Between Ugliness And Beauty.
Beautiful
Eye
Thinking
Living, There Is No Happiness In That. Living: Carrying One’s Painful Self Through The World. But Being, Being Is Happiness. Being: Becoming A Fountain, A Fountain On Which The Universe Falls Like Warm Rain.
Rain
Fall
Self
Necessity Knows No Magic Formulae-they Are All Left To Chance. If A Love Is To Be Unforgettable, Fortuities Must Immediately Start Fluttering Down To It Like Birds To Francis Of Assisi's Shoulders.
Love Is
Bird
Magic
A Worker May Be The Hammer's Master, But The Hammer Still Prevails. A Tool Knows Exactly How It Is Meant To Be Handled, While The User Of The Tool Can Only Have An Approximate Idea.
Ideas
Hammers
Tools
High Culture Is Nothing But A Child Of That European Perversion Called History, The Obsession We Have With Going Forward, With Considering The Sequence Of Generations A Relay Race In Which Everyone Surpasses His Predecessor . . .
Children
Race
Generations
She Had An Overwhelming Desire To Tell Him, Like The Most Banal Of Women. Don't Let Me Go, Hold Me Tight, Make Me Your Plaything, Your Slave, Be Strong! But They Were Words She Could Not Say. The Only Thing She Said When He Released Her From His Embrace Was, "you Don't Know How Happy I Am To Be With You." That Was The Most Her Reserved Nature Allowed Her To Express.
Strong
Overwhelming Desire
Unbearable Lightness Of Being
But Was It Love? The Feeling Of Wanting To Die Beside Her Was Clearly Exaggerated: He Had Seen Her Only Once Before In His Life! Was It Simply The Hysteria Of A Man, Who, Aware Deep Down Of His Inaptitude For Love, Felt The Self-deluding Need To Simulate It?
Men
Self
Hysteria
We All Need Someone To Look At Us. We Can Be Divided Into Four Categories According To The Kind Of Look We Wish To Live Under . . . The Fourth Category, The Rarest, Is The Category Of People Who Live In The Imaginary Eyes Of Those Who Are Not Present. They Are The Dreamers.
Eye
People
Dreamer
A Constant Interrogation.
Love
Constant
Interrogation
The Longing For Paradise Is Man's Longing Not To Be Man.
Men
Paradise
Longing
No Love Can Survive Muteness.
No Love
Man Reckons With Immortality, And Forgets To Reckon With Death.
Men
Forget
Immortality
As You Live Out Your Desolation, You Can Be Either Unhappy Or Happy. Having That Choice Is What Constitutes Your Freedom.
Choices
Unhappy
Desolation
Only After A While Did It Occur To Me (in Spite Of The Chilly Silence Which Surrounded Me) That My Story Was Not Of The Tragic Sort, But Rather Of The Comic Variety. At Any Rate That Afforded Me Some Comfort.
Silence
Comfort
Stories
Only Animals Were Not Expelled From Paradise.
Inspirational
Motivational
Animal
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