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And What Can Life Be Worth If The First Rehearsal For Life Is Life Itself?
-Milan Kundera
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And What Can Life

Milan Kundera
...
And What Can Life Be Worth If The First Rehearsal For Life Is Life Itself?

Understanding the Quote: "and what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life..."

This quote by Milan Kundera reflects deeply on the theme of rehearsal. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Rehearsal, Firsts, Unbearable, 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 rehearsal and firsts. 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.

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Topic
Rehearsal
Firsts
Unbearable
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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
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
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
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
Children Are The Future, Because Mankind Is Moving More And More Towards Infancy.
Children
Moving
Infancy
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
Yes, It Was Too Late, And Sabina Knew She Would Leave Paris, Move On, And On Again, Because Were She To Die Here They Would Cover Her Up With A Stone, And In The Mind Of A Woman For Whom No Place Is Home The Thought Of An End To All Flight Is Unbearable.
Moving
Home
Paris
I Want You To Be Weak. As Weak As I Am.
Want
Weak
I Want You
Draw A Line; Draw A Line That Pleases You. And Remember That It Is Not The Artist's Role To Copy The Outlines Of Things But To Create A World Of His Own Lines On Paper." (pp.28-29)
Artist
Roles
World
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
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
We Live Everything As It Comes, Without Warning, Like An Actor Going On Cold.
Actors
Warning
Rehearsal
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
Such Are The Splendors And Miseries Of Memory: It Is Proud Of Its Ability To Keep Truthful Track Of The Logical Sequence Of Past Events; But When It Comes To How We Experienced Them At The Time, Memory Feels No Obligation To Truth.
Memories
Past
Track
She Is Sadder And Sadder, And For A Man There Is No Balm More Soothing Than The Sadness He Has Caused A Woman.
Sadness
Men
Soothing
The Novel Is Not The Author's Confession; It Is An Investigation Of Human Life In The Trap The World Has Become
Life
People
World
Yes, It's Crazy. Love Is Either Crazy Or It's Nothing At All.
Crazy
Love Is
Crazy Love
Is A Novel Anything But A Trap Set For A Hero?
Hero
Traps
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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
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. There Is No Certainty That God Actually Did Grant Man Dominion Over Other Creatures. What Seems More Likely, In Fact, Is That Man Invented God To Sanctify The Dominion That He Usurped For Himself Over The Cow And The Horse.
Horse
Men
Order
Ambition Is A Poor Excuse For Not Having Sense Enough To Be Lazy.
Inspirational
Funny
Ambition
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
Even In The Game There Lurks A Lack Of Freedom; Even In A Game Is A Trap For The Players.
Player
Games
Traps
The Greater The Ambiguity, The Greater The Pleasure.
Pleasure
Ambiguity
Greater
In Eroticism As Dance: One Of The Partners Is Always Charged With Leading The Other.
Dance
Partners
All Previous Crimes Of The Russian Empire Had Been Committed Under The Cover Of A Discreet Shadow. The Deportation Of A Million Lithuanians, The Murder Of Hundreds Of Thousands Of Poles, The Liquidation Of The Crimean Tatars Remain In Our Memory, But No Photographic Documentation Exists; Sooner Or Later They Will Therefore Be Proclaimed As Fabrications.
Memories
Shadow
Empires
He Took Over Anger To Intimidate Subordinates, And In Time Anger Took Over Him.
Anger
Conflict
Intimidating
Nothing Requires A Greater Effort Of Thought Than Arguments To Justify The Rule Of Non-thought.
Effort
Argument
Justify
If Hatred Strikes You, If You Get Accused, Thrown To The Lions, You Can Expect One Of Two Reactions From People Who Know You: Some Of Them Will Join In The Kill, The Others Will Discreetly Pretend To Know Nothing, Hear Nothing, So You Can Go Right On Seeing Them And Talking To Them. That Second Category, Discreet And Tactful, Those Are Your Friends. 'friends' In The Modern Sense Of The Term. Listen, Jean-marc, I've Known That Forever.
Talking
Two
People
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
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
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
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
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
Anyone Whose Goal Is 'something Higher' Must Expect Someday To Suffer Vertigo.
Goal
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Unbearable
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
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Without Realizing It, The Individual Composes His Life According To The Laws Of Beauty Even In Times Of Greatest Distress.
Courage
Law
Coincidence In Life
Kitsch Causes Two Tears To Flow In Quick Succession. The First Tear Says: How Nice To See Children Running On The Grass! The Second Tear Says: How Nice To Be Moved, Together With All Mankind, By Children Running On The Grass!
Running
Children
Nice
...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
...[p]eople Who Shout Joy From The Rooftops Are Often The Saddest Of All... (p.24)
Joy
Rooftops
Saddest
In The World Of Highways, A Beautiful Landscape Means: An Island Of Beauty Connected By A Long Line With Other Islands Of Beauty.
Beauty
Beautiful
Mean
Without The Meditative Background That Is Criticism, Works Become Isolated Gestures, Historical Accidents, Soon Forgotten.
Historical
Criticism
Gestures
The Psychological And Physiological Mechanism Of Love Is So Complex That At A Certain Period In His Life A Young Man Must Concentrate All His Energy On Coming To Grips With It, And In This Way He Misses The Actual Content Of The Love: The Woman He Loves. (in This He Is Much Like A Young Violinist Who Cannot Concentrate On The Emotional Content Of A Piece Until The Technique Required To Play It Comes Automatically.)
Love Is
Men
Emotional
Necessity, Weight, And Value Are Three Concepts Inextricably Bound: Only Necessity Is Heavy, And Only What Is Heavy Has Value.
Three
Weight
Heavy
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
Modern Stupidity Means Not Ignorance But The Nonthought Of Received Ideas
Mean
Ignorance
Ideas
The Border Between Good And Evil Is Terribly Fuzzy.
Evil
Borders
Fuzzy
I Think I Am A Much Better Actor Than I Have Allowed Myself To Be.
Thinking
Actors
And What Can Life Be Worth If The First Rehearsal For Life Is Life Itself?
Rehearsal
Firsts
Unbearable
Once Her Love Had Been Publicized, It Would Gain Weight, Become A Burden.
Weight
Gains
Burden
The Stupidity Of People Comes From Having An Answer For Everything. The Wisdom Of The Novel Comes From Having A Question For Everything.
People
Stupidity
Answers
The Difference Between The University Graduate And The Autodidact Lies Not So Much In The Extent Of Knowledge As In The Extent Of Vitality And Self-confidence.
Lying
Self Confidence
Differences
How Did The Senator Know That Children Meant Happiness? Could He See Into Their Souls? What If The Moment They Were Out Of Sight, Three Of Them Jumped The Fourth And Began Beating Him Up?
Children
Sight
Soul
Suspending Moral Judgment Is Not The Immorality Of The Novel; It Is Its Morality.
Morality
Judgment
Novel
All Lovers Unconsciously Establish Their Own Rules Of The Game, Which From The Outset Admit Of No Transgression.
Games
Lovers
Rules Of The Game
She Was Experiencing The Same Odd Happiness And Odd Sadness As Then. The Sadness Meant: We Are At The Last Station. The Happiness Meant: We Are Together. The Sadness Was Form, The Happiness Content. Happiness Filled The Space Of Sadness.
Sadness
Space
Together
She Regarded Books As The Emblems Of Secret Brotherhood. A Man With This Sort Of Library Couldn't Possibly Hurt Her.
Hurt
Book
Men
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
Those Who Consider The Devil To Be A Partisan Of Evil And Angels To Be Warriors For Good Accept The Demagogy Of The Angels. Things Are Clearly More Complicated.
Spiritual
Angel
Warrior
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
I Have A Strong Will To Love You For Eternity.
Love
Strong
Eternity
Only The Most Naive Of Questions Are Truly Serious.
Questions And Answers
Serious
Naive
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
Great Novels Are Always A Little More Intelligent Than Their Authors.
Intelligent
Littles
Novel
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
Beauty Is A Rebellion Against Time.
Rebellion
"pick Me Up," Is The Message Of A Person Who Keeps Falling. Tomas Kept Picking Her Up, Patiently.
Fall
Pick Me Up
Messages
Only Animals Were Not Expelled From Paradise.
Inspirational
Motivational
Animal
The Sound Of Laughter Is Like The Vaulted Dome Of A Temple Of Happiness.
Happiness
Laughter
Joy
Only A Literary Work That Reveals An Unknown Fragment Of Human Existence Has A Reason For Being.
Reason
Fragments
Existence
Why Don't You Ever Use Your Strength On Me?" She Said. Because Love Means Renouncing Strength," Said Franz Softly.
Mean
Use
Unbearable Lightness Of Being
In The Sunset Of Dissolution, Everything Is Illuminated By The Aura Of Nostalgia, Even The Guillotine.
Sunset
Auras
Unbearable
What I Love In A Woman Is Not What She Is In And For Herself, But The Side Of Herself She Turns Towards Me, What She Is For Me. I Love Her As Character In Our Common Love Story. What Wuld Hamlet Be Without The Castle At Elsinore, Without Ophelia, Without All The Concrete Situations He Goes Through, What Would He Be Without The Text Of His Part? What Would Be Left But An Empty, Dumb, Illusory Essence?
Character
Essence
Dumb
The Serial Number Of A Human Specimen Is The Face, That Accidental And Unrepeatable Combination Of Features. It Reflects Neither Character Nor Soul, Nor What We Call The Self. The Face Is Only The Serial Number Of A Specimen
Character
Self
Numbers
From The Top Of The Staircase She Sees The London Train, Modern And Elegant, And She Tells Herself Again: Whether It's Good Luck Or Bad To Be Born Onto This Earth, The Best Way To Spend A Life Here Is To Let Yourself Be Carried Along, As I Am Moving At This Moment, By A Cheerful, Noisy Crowd Moving Forward.
Moving
Good Luck
Cheerful
Dreaming Is Not Merely An Act Of Communication; It Is Also An Aesthetic Activity, A Game Of The Imagination, A Game That Is A Value In Itself.
Dream
Communication
Games
There Is Nothing Heavier Than Compassion. Not Even One's Own Pain Weighs So Heavy As The Pain One Feels For Someone, Pain Intensified By The Imagination And Prolonged By A Hundred Echos.
Pain
Compassion
Imagination
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
Fidelity Gives A Unity To Lives That Would Otherwise Splinter Into Thousands Of Split-second Impressions.
Giving
Unity
Splinters
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
You Can't Measure The Mutual Affection Of Two Human Beings By The Number Of Words They Exchange.
Love
Two
Numbers
He Was No Longer Quite Sure Whether Anything He Had Ever Thought Or Felt Was Truly His Own Property, Or Whether His Thoughts Were Merely A Common Part Of The World’s Store Of Ideas Which Had Always Existed Ready-made And Which People Only Borrowed, Like Books From A Library.
Book
Ideas
People
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
When A Private Talk Over A Bottle Of Wine Is Broadcast On The Radio, What Can It Mean But That The World Is Turning Into A Concentration Camp?
Wine
Mean
Bottles
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
Disgust At Having To Talk About Oneself Is What Distinguishes Novelistic Talent From Lyric Talent.
Talent
Disgusting
Oneself
Forgive Me," He Went On. "for A Long Time I Have Had The Peculiar Habit Of Not Arriving But Appearing.
Long
Forgive Me
Forgiving
The Irresistible Proliferation Of Graphomania Shows Me That Everyone Without Exception Bears A Potential Writer Within Him, So That The Entire Human Species Has Good Reason To Go Down Into The Streets And Shout: We Are All Writers! 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. One Morning (and It Will Be Soon), When Everyone Wakes Up As A Writer, The Age Of Universal Deafness And Incomprehension Will Have Arrived.
Morning
Age
Unseen
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
But When The Strong Were Too Weak To Hurt The Weak, The Weak Had To Be Strong Enough To Leave.
Strong
Hurt
Unbearable
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 Act Is Of Itself Either Good Or Bad. Only Its Place In The Order Of Things Makes It Good Or Bad.
Order
Yes, It's A Well-known Fact About You: You're Like Death, You Take Everything.
Relationship
Sex
Facts
Anyone Whose Goal Is 'something Higher' Must Expect Someday To Suffer Vertigo. What Is Vertigo? Fear Of Falling? No, Vertigo Is Something Other Than Fear Of Falling. It Is The Voice Of The Emptiness Below Us Which Tempts And Lures Us, It Is The Desire To Fall, Against Which, Terrified, We Defend Ourselves.
Success
Fall
Voice
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
The Novelist Teaches The Reader To Comprehend The World As A Question.
Novelists
World
Teach
A Man Possessed With Peace Is Always Smiling
Men
Always Smile
Possessed
Any New Possibility That Existence Acquires, Even The Least Likely, Transforms Everything About Existence.
Possibility
Existence
Acquire
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
We Don't Know When Our Name Came Into Being Or How Some Distant Ancestor Acquired It. We Don't Understand Our Name At All, We Don't Know Its History And Yet We Bear It With Exalted Fidelity, We Merge With It, We Like It, We Are Ridiculously Proud Of It As If We Had Thought It Up Ourselves In A Moment Of Brilliant Inspiration.
Funny
Humorous
Inspiration
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
The Moment Kafka Attracts More Attenetion Than Joseph K., Kafka's Posthumous Death Begins.
Moments
Posthumous
It Does Take Great Maturity To Understand That The Opinion We Are Arguing For Is Merely The Hypothesis We Favor, Necessarily Imperfect, Probably Transitory, Which Only Very Limited Minds Can Declare To Be A Certainty Or A Truth.
Maturity
Mind
Favors
[kafka] Transformed The Profoundly Antipoetic Material Of A Highly Bureaucratized Society Into The Great Poetry Of The Novel; He Transformed A Very Ordinary Story Of A Man Who Cannot Obtain A Promised Job . . . Into Myth, Into Epic, Into A Kind Of Beauty Never Before Seen.
Jobs
Epic
Men
The More Vast The Amount Of Time We've Left Behind Us, The More Irresistible Is The Voice Calling Us To Return To It.
Voice
Calling
Return
Love Is A Desire For That Lost Half Of Ourselves.
Love Is
Desire
Half
La Memoria No Guarda Películas, Guarda Fotografías.
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
Culture Is Perishing In Overproduction, In An Avalanche Of Words, In The Madness Of Quantity.
Culture
Avalanches
Madness
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
Jealousy Has The Amazing Power To Illuminate A Single Person In An Intense Beam Of Light, Keeping The Multitude Of Others In Total Darkness.
Light
Darkness
Intense
...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.
Morning
Sleep
Blow
But What Had Happened, Had Happened, And It Was No Longer Possible To Right Anything.
Happened
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
Youth Is Terrible: It Is A Stage Trod By Children In Buskins And A Variety Of Costumes Mouthing Speeches They've Memorized And Fanatically Believe But Only Half Understand. And History Is Terrible Because It So Often Ends Up A Playground For The Immature; A Playground For The Young Nero, A Playground For The Young Bonaparte, A Playground For The Easily Roused Mobs Of Children Whose Simulated Passions And Simplistic Poses Suddenly Metamorphose Into A Catastrophically Real Reality.
Children
Real
Believe
A Gesture Cannot Be Regarded As The Expression Of An Individual, As His Creation (because No Individual Is Capable Of Creating A Fully Original Gesture, Belonging To Nobody Else), Nor Can It Even Be Regarded As That Person's Instrument; On The Contrary, It Is Gestures That Use Us As Their Instruments, As Their Bearers And Incarnations
Expression
Creating
Individuality
Biographers Know Nothing About The Intimate Sex Lives Of Their Own Wives, But They Think They Know All About Stendhal's Or Faulkner's.
Marriage
Sex
Thinking
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
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
And There Lies The Horror: The Past We Remember Is Devoid Of Time. Impossible To Reexperience A Love The Way We Reread A Book Or Resee A Film.
Lying
Book
Past
Immortality No Longer Interests The Weary Old Man At All.
Men
Immortality
Old Man
Physical Love Is Unthinkable Without Violence.
Relationship
Love Is
Violence
Dogs Are Our Link To Paradise. They Don't Know Evil Or Jealousy Or Discontent.
Jealousy
Dog
Evil
Einmal Ist Keinmal, Says Tomas To Himself. What Happens But Once, Says The German Adage, Might As Well Not Have Happened At All. If We Have Only One Life To Live, We Might As Well Not Have Lived At All.
Life
Might
Unbearable Lightness Of Being
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
Two People In Love, Alone, Isolated From The World, That's Beautiful.
Love
Beautiful
Two
There Is No Perfection Only Life
Perfection
Nothing Yet. I've Been Waiting." "for What?" She Made No Response. She Could Not Tell Him That She Had Been Waiting For Him.
Waiting
Made
Response
Tereza Knew What Happens During The Moment Love Is Born: The Woman Cannot Resist The Voice Calling Forth Her Terrified Soul; The Man Cannot Resist The Woman Whose Soul Thus Responds To His Voice.
Love Is
Men
Voice
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
In The Love Poetry Of Every Age, The Woman Longs To Be Weighed Down By The Man's Body.
Men
Age
Body
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
The Present Era Grabs Everything That Was Ever Written In Order To Transform It Into Films, Tv Programs; Or Cartoons. What Is Essential In A Novel Is Precisely What Can Only Be Expressed In A Novel, And So Every Adaptation Contains Nothing But The Non-essential. If A Person Is Still Crazy Enough To Write Novels Nowadays And Wants To Protect Them, He Has To Write Them In Such A Way That They Cannot Be Adapted, In Other Words, In Such A Way That They Cannot Be Retold.
Crazy
Book
Writing
Laughing Deeply Is Living Deeply.
Happiness
Laughing
Living For Sabina Meant Seeing. Seeing Is Limited By Two Borders: Strong Light, Which Blinds, And Total Darkness. Perhaps That Was What Motivated Sabina's Distaste For All Extremism. Extremes Mean Borders Beyond Which Life Ends, And A Passion For Extremism, In Art And In Politics, Is A Veiled Longing For Death.
Art
Strong
Passion
I Feel A Frantic Desire To Free Myself. To Start All Over Again And In Another Way.
Desire
Way
Feels
I Remember That The Day I Finished 'the Angels,' Part Three Of 'the Book Of Laughter And Forgetting', I Was Terribly Proud Of Myself. I Was Sure That I Had Discovered The Key To A New Way Of Putting Together A Narrative.
Laughter
Book
Angel
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
Metaphors Are Dangerous. Love Begins With A Metaphor
Love Is
Unbearable Lightness Of Being
Metaphor
Kitsch Excludes Everything From Its Purview Which Is Essentially Unacceptable In Human Existence.
Kitsch
Unbearable Lightness Of Being
Existence
The Light That Radiates From The Great Novels Time Can Never Dim, For Human Existence Is Perpetually Being Forgotten By Man And Thus The Novelists' Discoveries, However Old They May Be, Will Never Cease To Astonish.
Men
Light
Discovery
The Important Thing Is To Abide By The Rule Of Threes. Either You See A Woman Three Times In Quick Succession And Then Never Again, Or You Maintain Relations Over The Years But Make Sure That The Rendezvous Are At Least Three Weeks Apart.
Years
Important
Three
The Combination Of A Frivolous Form And A Serious Subject Immediately Unmasks The Truth About Our Dramas.
Drama
Serious Subjects
Form
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
When The Heart Speaks, The Mind Finds It Indecent To Object.
Inspirational
Heart
Mind
The Ludicrous Element In Our Feeling Does Not Make Them Any Less Authentic.
Feelings
Doe
Elements
Metaphors Are Dangerous. Metaphors Are Not To Be Trifled With.
Unbearable
Metaphor
Dangerous
... Characters Are Not Born Like People, Of Woman; They Are Born Of A Situation, A Sentence, A Metaphor Containing In A Nutshell A Basic Human Possibility That The Author Thinks No One Else Has Discovered Or Said Something Essential About.
Character
Thinking
People
There Is Such A Thing As Everyday, Ordinary, Vulgar Ecstasy; The Ecstasy Of Anger, The Ecstasy Of Speed At The Wheel, The Ecstasy Of Ear-splitting Noise, Ecstasy In The Soccer Stadium.
Soccer
Football
Everyday
The Heaviest Of Burdens Is Simultaneously An Image Of Life's Most Intense Fullfillment. The Heavier The Burden, The Closer Our Lives Come To The Earth, The More Real And Truthful They Become. Conversely, The Absolute Absence Of A Burden Causes Man To Be Lighter Than Air, To Soar Into New Heights, Take Leave Of The Earth And His Earthly Being, And Become Only Half Real, His Movements As Free As They Are Insignificant. What Then Shall We Choose? Weight Or Lightness?
Real
Men
Air
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
The History Of Music Is Mortal, But The Idiocy Of The Guitar Is Eternal.
Music
Guitar
Idiocy
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
How Goodness Heightens Beauty!
Beauty
Body Image
Goodness
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
A Great Deal Has Been Said About Love At First Sight; I Am Perfectly Aware Of Love's Retrospective Tendency To Make A Legend Of Itself, Turn Its Beginnings Into Myth; So I Don't Want To Assert That It Was Love; But I Have No Doubt There Was A Kind Of Clairvoyance At Work: I Immediately Felt, Sensed, Grasped The Essence Of Lucie's Being Or, To Be More Precise, The Essence Of What She Was Later To Become For Me; Lucie Had Revealed Herself To Me The Way Religious Truth Reveals Itself.
Religious
Sight
Essence
Before We Are Forgotten, We Will Be Turned Into Kitsch. Kitsch Is The Stopover Between Being And Oblivion.
Kitsch
Forgotten
Unbearable Lightness Of Being
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
Tomas Did Not Realize At The Time That Metaphors Are Dangerous. Metaphors Are Not To Be Trifled With. A Single Metaphor Can Give Birth To Love.
Giving
Unbearable
Birth
Our Dreams Prove That To Imagine - To Dream About Things That Have Not Happened - Is Among Mankind's Deepest Needs.
Dream
Needs
Imagine
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
The Struggle Of Man Against Power Is The Struggle Of Memory Against Forgetting.
Strength
Memories
Struggle
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
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 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
But Which Was The Real Me? Let Me Be Perfectly Honest: I Was A Man Of Many Faces. (p.33)
Real
Men
Faces
No Love Can Survive Muteness.
No Love
...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
A Single Metaphor Can Give Birth To Love.
Giving
Unbearable
Birth
Business Only Has Two Functions - Innovation And Marketing.
Two
Innovation
Marketing
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
You Can Understand Nothing About Art, Particularly Modern Art, If You Do Not Understand That Imagination Is A Value In Itself.
Art
Imagination
Modern
I Cannot Hate Them Because Nothing Binds Me To Them; I Have Nothing In Common With Them.
Hate
Common
I Understood That There Was No Escaping The Memories, That I Was Surround By Them. (p.30)
Memories
Escaping
Understood
As You Live Out Your Desolation, You Can Be Either Unhappy Or Happy. Having That Choice Is What Constitutes Your Freedom.
Choices
Unhappy
Desolation
On The Surface, An Intelligible Lie; Underneath, The Unintelligible Truth.
Lying
Chaos
Unbearable Lightness Of Being
By Giving The Love Act A Name, If Only An Innocent Little Word Like, "it," He Paved The Way For Other Words, Words That Would Reflect Physical Love As In A Set Of Mirrors.
Mirrors
Names
Giving
Those Boobs Of Yours Are Ubiquitous - Like God!
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 Beauty Of New York Is Unintentional; It Arose Independent Of Human Design, Like A Stalagmite Cavern.
New York
Independent
Design
Listening To A News Broadcast Is Like Smoking A Cigarette And Crushing The Butt In The Ashtray.
Crush
Smoking
Listening
We Might Also Call Vertigo The Intoxication Of The Weak. Aware Of His Weakness, A Man Decides To Give In Rather Than Stand Up To It. He Is Drunk With Weakness, Wishes To Grow Even Weaker, Wishes To Fall Down In The Middle Of The Main Square In Front Of Everybody, Wishes To Be Down, Lower Than Down.
Fall
Men
Squares
What Is Unique About The "i" Hides Itself Exactly In What Is Unimaginable About A Person. All We Are Able To Imagine Is What Makes Everyone Like Everyone Else, What People Have In Common. The Individual "i" Is What Differs From The Common Stock, That Is, What Cannot Be Guessed At Or Calculated, What Must Be Unveiled, Uncovered, Conquered.
Unique
People
Able
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.
Drama
Unbearable
Burden
War And Culture, Those Are The Two Poles Of Europe, Her Heaven And Hell, Her Glory And Shame, And They Cannot Be Separated From One Another. When One Comes To An End, The Other Will End Also And One Cannot End Without The Other. The Fact That No War Has Broken Out In Europe For Fifty Years Is Connected In Some Mysterious Way With The Fact That For Fifty Years No New Picasso Has Appeared Either.
War
Fighting
Years
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
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
...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
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
In Her Presence I Could Dare Everything: Sincerity, Emotion, Pathos.
Emotion
Sincerity
Pathos
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
No Matter How Much We Scorn It, Kitsch Is An Integral Part Of The Human Condition.
Kitsch
Matter
Human Condition
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
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
Is Not Parody The Eternal Lot Of Man?
Men
Parody
Eternal
Flirting Is A Promise Of Sexual Intercourse Without A Guarantee.
Flirting
Promise
Guarantees
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
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
It Is Wrong To Chide The Novel For Being Fascinated By Mysterious Coincidences... But It Is Right To Chide Man For Being Blind To Such Coincidences In His Daily Life. For He Thereby Deprives His Life A Dimension Of Beauty.
Men
Mysterious
Coincidence
Remembering Now All Those Farewells (fake Farewells, Worked-up Farewells), Irena Thinks: A Person Who Messes Up Her Goodbyes Shouldn’t Expect Much From Her Re-unions.
Goodbye
Farewell
Thinking
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