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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?

-Milan Kundera

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But Was It Love?

Milan Kundera

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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?

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My Lifelong Ambition Has Been To Unite The Utmost Seriousness Of Question With The Utmost Lightness Of Form.

Love Is A Continual Interrogation. I Don’t Know Of A Better Definition Of Love.

Definition Of Love

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?

The Emotion Of Love Gives All Of Us A Misleading Illusion Of Knowing The Other.

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.

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.

I Think I Am A Much Better Actor Than I Have Allowed Myself To Be.

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.

No Matter How Much We Scorn It, Kitsch Is An Integral Part Of The Human Condition.

Human Condition

Every Love Relationship Rests On An Unwritten Agreement Unthinkingly Concluded By The Lovers In The First Weeks Of Their Love. They Are Still In A Kind Of Dream But At The Same Time, Without Knowing It, Are Drawing Up, Like Uncompromising Lawyers, The Detailed Clauses Of Their Contract. O 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.

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.

Exaggeration Is

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.

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".

We Live Everything As It Comes, Without Warning, Like An Actor Going On Cold.

...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.

Metaphors Are Dangerous. Metaphors Are Not To Be Trifled With.

All Novels . . . Are Concerned With The Enigma Of The Self. As Soon As You Create An Imaginary Being, A Character, You Are Automatically Confronted By The Question: What Is The Self? How Can It Be Grasped?

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?

Culture Is Perishing In Overproduction, In An Avalanche Of Words, In The Madness Of Quantity.

The More Vast The Amount Of Time We've Left Behind Us, The More Irresistible Is The Voice Calling Us To Return To It.

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.

The Love Between Dog And Man Is Idyllic, Dogs Were Never Expelled From Paradise.

Sensuality Is The Total Mobilization Of The Senses: An Individual Observes His Partner Intently, Straining To Catch Every Sound.

A Constant Interrogation.

The Struggle Of Man Against Power Is The Struggle Of Memory Against Forgetting.

The Novel Is A Territory Where One Does Not Make Assertions; It Is A Territory Of Play And Of Hypotheses.

What I Need Most Of All Is Certainty.

But Then He Told Himself: What Does It Really Mean To Be Useful? Today's World, Just As It Is, Contains The Sum Of The Utility Of All People Of All Times. Which Implies: The Highest Morality Consists In Being Useless.

God Has Been Kind To Dogs In No Putting A Sense Of Beauty Into Their Heads.

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.

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.

I Feel A Frantic Desire To Free Myself. To Start All Over Again And In Another Way.

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?

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.

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.

The Border Between Good And Evil Is Terribly Fuzzy.

Immortality Is A Ridiculous Illusion, An Empty Word, A Butterfly Net Chasing The Wind.

I Have A Strong Will To Love You For Eternity.

She Had Come To Him To Escape Her Mother's World, A World Where All Bodies Were Equal. She Had Come To Him To Make Her Body Unique, Irreplaceble. But He, Too Had Drawn An Equal Sign Between Her And The Rest Of Them: He Kissed Them All Alike, Stroked Them All Alike, Made No, Absolutely No Distiction Between Tereza's Body And The Other Bodies. He Sent Her Back To The World She Tried To Escape, Sent To March Naked With The Other Naked Women

A Man Is Responsible For His Ignorance.

But What Had Happened, Had Happened, And It Was No Longer Possible To Right Anything.

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.

Now Time Has A Very Different Look; It Is No Longer The Conquering Present Capturing The Future; It Is The Present Conquered And Captured And Carried Off By The Past.

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.

Anyone Whose Goal Is 'something Higher' Must Expect Someday To Suffer Vertigo.

All Great Novels, All True Novels, Are Bisexual.

In The World Of Highways, A Beautiful Landscape Means: An Island Of Beauty Connected By A Long Line With Other Islands Of Beauty.

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.

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.

Love Is A Desire For That Lost Half Of Ourselves.

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.

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.

You Can't Measure The Mutual Affection Of Two Human Beings By The Number Of Words They Exchange.

Jealousy Has The Amazing Power To Illuminate A Single Person In An Intense Beam Of Light, Keeping The Multitude Of Others In Total Darkness.

Laughing Deeply Is Living Deeply.

I Want You To Be Weak. As Weak As I Am.

Kitsch Excludes Everything From Its Purview Which Is Essentially Unacceptable In Human Existence.

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

...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.

When We Ignore The Body, We Are More Easily Victimized By It.

Two People In Love, Alone, Isolated From The World, That's Very Beautiful. But What Would They Nourish Their Intimate Talk With? However Contemptible The World May Be, They Still Need It To Be Able To Talk Together.

Today We're All Alike, All Of Us Bound Together By Our Shared Apathy Toward Work. That Very Apathy Has Become A Passion. The One Great Collective Passion Of Our Time.

Noise Has One Advantage. It Drowns Out Words.

If I Hadn't Met You, I'd Certainly Have Fallen In Love With Him.

Fidelity Gives A Unity To Lives That Would Otherwise Splinter Into Thousands Of Split-second Impressions.

Listening To A News Broadcast Is Like Smoking A Cigarette And Crushing The Butt In The Ashtray.

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.

Why Don't You Ever Use Your Strength On Me?" She Said. Because Love Means Renouncing Strength," Said Franz Softly.

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

Suspending Moral Judgment Is Not The Immorality Of The Novel; It Is Its Morality.

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.

Without The Meditative Background That Is Criticism, Works Become Isolated Gestures, Historical Accidents, Soon Forgotten.

In Irena’s Head The Alcohol Plays A Double Role: It Frees Her Fantasy, Encourages Her Boldness, Makes Her Sensual, And At The Same Time It Dims Her Memory. She Makes Love Wildly, Lasciviously, And At The Same Time The Curtain Of Oblivion Wraps Her Lewdness In An All-concealing Darkness. As If A Poet Were Writing His Greatest Poem With Ink That Instantly Disappears.

The Only Reason People Want To Be Masters Of The Future Is To Change The Past.

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.

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?

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Physical Love Is Unthinkable Without Violence.

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.

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.

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.

Leroy Interrupted Chantal's Fantasies: "freedom? As You Live Our Your Desolation, You Can Be Either Unhappy Or Happy. Having That Choice Is What Constitutes Your Freedom. You're Free To Melt Your Own Individuality Into The Cauldron Of The Multitude Either With A Feeling Of Defeat Or Euphoria.

To Rebel Against Being Born A Woman Seemed As Foolish To Her As To Take Pride In It.

The Eye... The Point Where A Person's Identity Is Concentrated.

He Was Well Aware That Of The Two Of Three Thousand Times He Had Made Love (how Many Times Had He Made Love In His Life?) Only Two Or Three Were Really Essential And Unforgettable. The Rest Were Mere Echoes, Imitations, Repetitions, Or Reminiscences.

People Derived Too Much Pleasure From Seeing Their Fellow Man Morally Humiliated To Spoil That Pleasure By Hearing Out An Explanation.

Woman Is The Future Of Man. That Means That The World Which Was Once Formed In Man's Image Will Now Be Transformed To The Image Of Woman. The More Technical And Mechanical, Cold And Metallic It Becomes, The More It Will Need The Kind Of Warmth That Only The Woman Can Give It. If We Want To Save The World, We Must Adapt To The Woman, Let Ourselves Be Led By The Woman, Let Ourselves Be Penetrated By The Ewigweiblich, The Eternally Feminine!

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.

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.

Being In A Foreign Country Means Walking A Tightrope High Above The Ground Without The Net Afforded A Person By The Country Where He Has His Family, Colleagues, And Friends, And Where He Can Easily Say What He Has To Say In A Language He Has Known From Childhood.

The Novel Is A Meditation On Existence As Seen Through The Medium Of Imaginary Characters.

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.

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.

The Goals We Pursue Are Always Veiled. A Girl Who Longs For Marriage Longs For Something She Knows Nothing About. The Boy Who Hankers After Fame Has No Idea What Fame Is. The Thing That Gives Our Every Move Its Meaning Is Always Totally Unknown To Us.

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!

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.

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.

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

Forgive Me," He Went On. "for A Long Time I Have Had The Peculiar Habit Of Not Arriving But Appearing.

Believe Me, Nothing Is More Beautiful Than To Carry Out Crazy Ideas. I'd Like My Whole Life To Be One Single Crazy Idea.

The Combination Of A Frivolous Form And A Serious Subject Immediately Unmasks The Truth About Our Dramas.

Serious Subjects

In The Mind Of A Woman For Whom No Place Is Home The Thought Of An End To All Flight Is Unbearable.

La Memoria No Guarda Películas, Guarda Fotografías.

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.

There Is No Means Of Testing Which Decision Is Better, Because There Is No Basis For Comparison. We Live Everything As It Comes, Without Warning, Like An Actor Going On Cold. And What Can Life Be Worth If The First Rehearsal For Life Is Life Itself? That Is Why Life Is Always Like A Sketch. No, "sketch" Is Not Quite A Word, Because A Sketch Is An Outline Of Something, The Groundwork For A Picture, Whereas The Sketch That Is Our Life Is A Sketch For Nothing, An Outline With No Picture.

People Are Always Shouting They Want To Create A Better Future. It's Not True. The Future Is An Apathetic Void Of No Interest To Anyone. The Past Is Full Of Life, Eager To Irritate Us, Provoke And Insult Us, Tempt Us To Destroy Or Repaint It. The Only Reason People Want To Be Masters Of The Future Is To Change The Past.

Only Animals Were Not Expelled From Paradise.

[w]e Must Never Allow The Future To Collapse Under The Burden Of Memory.

Since The Insignificance Of All Things Is Our Lot, We Should Not Bear It As An Affliction But Learn To Enjoy It.

It Was Futile To Attack With Reason The Stout Wall Of Irrational Feelings That, As Is Known, Is The Stuff Of Which The Female Mind Is Made.

Is A Novel Anything But A Trap Set For A Hero?

Biographers Know Nothing About The Intimate Sex Lives Of Their Own Wives, But They Think They Know All About Stendhal's Or Faulkner's.

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.

Yes, The Essence Of Every Love Is A Child, And It Makes No Difference At All Whether It Has Ever Actually Been Conceived Or Born. In The Algebra Of Love A Child Is The Symbol Of The Magical Sum Of Two Beings.

A Person Who Longs To Leave The Place Where He Lives Is An Unhappy Person.

True Human Goodness, In All Its Purity And Freedom, Can Come To The Fore Only When Its Recipient Has No Power.

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

Modern Stupidity Means Not Ignorance But The Nonthought Of Received Ideas

Living Is Being Happy: Seeing, Hearing, Touching, Drinking, Eating, Urinating, Defecating, Diving Into The Water And Gazing At The Sky, Laughing And Crying.

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.

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

Children, Never Look Back!" And This Meant That We Must Never Allow The Future To Be Weighed Down By Memory . For Children Have No Past, And That Is The Whole Secret Of The Magical Innocence Of Their Smiles.

The Body Was A Cage, And Inside That Cage Was Something Which Looked, Listened, Feared, Thought And Marveled; That Something, That Remainder Left Over After The Body Had Been Accounted For, Was The Soul.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Idea Of Eternal Return Is A Mysterious One, And Nietzsche Has Often Perplexed Other Philosophers With It: To Think That Everything Recurs As We Once Experienced It, And That The Recurrence Itself Recurs Ad Infinitum! What Does This Mad Myth Signify?

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.

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.

Before We Are Forgotten, We Will Be Turned Into Kitsch. Kitsch Is The Stopover Between Being And Oblivion.

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

Dogs Are Our Link To Paradise.

Optimism Is The Opium Of The People.

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?

A Man Able To Think Isn't Defeated - Even When He Is Defeated.

The Greater The Ambiguity, The Greater The Pleasure.

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.

We Are Born One Time Only, We Can Never Start A New Life Equipped With The Experience We've Gained From The Previous One. We Leave Childhood Without Knowing What Youth Is, We Marry Without Knowing What It Is To Be Married, And Even When We Enter Old Age, We Don't Know What It Is We're Heading For: The Old Are Innocent Children Innocent Of Thier Old Age. In That Sense, Man's World Is The Planet Of Inexperience.

Indeed, The Only Truly Serious Questions Are Ones That Even A Child Can Formulate. Only The Most Naive Of Questions Are Truly Serious.

Questions And Answers

You Can Understand Nothing About Art, Particularly Modern Art, If You Do Not Understand That Imagination Is A Value In Itself.

Attaching Love To Sex Is One Of The Most Bizarre Ideas The Creator Ever Had.

The Ludicrous Element In Our Feeling Does Not Make Them Any Less Authentic.

Speak Truth To Power.

Speak The Truth

He Kept Recalling Her Lying On His Bed; She Reminded Him Of No One In His Former Life.

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.

The Source Of Anxiety Lies In The Future. If You Can Keep The Future Out Of Mind, You Can Forget Your Worries.

Let Us Consider The Critic, Therefore, As A Discoverer Of Discoveries.

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.

This Symmetrical Composition--the Same Motif At The Beginning And At The End--may Seem Quite "novelistic" To You, And I Am Willing To Agree, But Only On Condition That You Refrain From Reading Such Notions As "fictive," "fabricated," And "untrue To Life" Into The Word "novelistic." Because Human Lives Are Composed In Precisely Such A Fashion.

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.

I Cannot Hate Them Because Nothing Binds Me To Them; I Have Nothing In Common With Them.

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

There Are Things That Can Be Accomplished Only By Violence. Physical Love Is Unthinkable Without Violence.

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

Fortunately, I Read (the Books) Without Knowing What I Was In For, And The Best Thing That Can Ever Happen To A Reader Happened To Me: I Loved Something That, By Conviction (or By My Nature) I Should Not Have Loved

Nudity Is The Uniform Of The Other Side... Nudity Is A Shroud.

Unlike The Puerile Loyalty To A Conviction, Loyalty To A Friend Is A Virtue - Perhaps The Only Virtue, The Last Remaining One.

Only A Literary Work That Reveals An Unknown Fragment Of Human Existence Has A Reason For Being.

No Great Movement Designed To Change The World Can Bear To Be Laughed At Or Belittled. Mockery Is A Rust That Corrodes All It Touches.

Love Is The Longing For The Half Of Ourselves We Have Lost.

Isn't Beer The Holy Libation Of Sincerity? The Potion That Dispels All Hypocrisy, Any Charade Of Fine Manners? The Drink That Does Nothing Worse Than Incite Its Fans To Urinate In All Innocence, To Gain Weight In All Frankness?

Our Historical Experience Teaches Us That Men Imitate One Another, That Their Attitudes Are Statistically Calculable, Their Opinions Manipulable, And That Man Is Therefore Less An Individual (a Subject) Than An Element In A Mass.

Necessity, Weight, And Value Are Three Concepts Inextricably Bound: Only Necessity Is Heavy, And Only What Is Heavy Has Value.

For A Novelist, A Given Historic Situation Is An Anthropologic Laboratory In Which He Explores His Basic Question: What Is Human Existence?

He Took Over Anger To Intimidate Subordinates, And In Time Anger Took Over Him.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Longing For Paradise Is Man's Longing Not To Be Man.

Love Is A Battle, And I Plan To Go On Fighting. To The End.

The History Of Music Is Mortal, But The Idiocy Of The Guitar Is Eternal.

Yes, It's A Well-known Fact About You: You're Like Death, You Take Everything.

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.

No Love Can Survive Muteness.

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.

Art Is The Human Disposition Of Sensible Or Intelligible Matter For An Esthetic End.

Dreaming Is Not Merely An Act Of Communication (or Coded Communication, If You Like); It Is Also An Aesthetic Activity, A Game Of The Imagination, A Game That Is A Value In Itself. Our Dreams Prove That To Imagine--to Dream About Things That Have Not Happened--is Among Mankind's Deepest Needs. Herein Lies The Danger. If Dreams Were Not Beautiful, They Would Be Quickly Forgotten.

I Understood That There Was No Escaping The Memories, That I Was Surround By Them. (p.30)

Those Boobs Of Yours Are Ubiquitous - Like God!

The Stupidity Of People Comes From Having An Answer For Everything. The Wisdom Of The Novel Comes From Having A Question For Everything.

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.

I Am Not Worthy Of My Suffering. A Great Sentence. It Suggests Not Only That Suffering Is The Basis Of The Self, Its Sole Indubitable Ontological Proof, But Also That It Is The One Feeling Most Worthy Of Respect; The Value Of All Values.

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 . . .

The Best Actors Do Not Let The Wheels Show.

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.

Radio... Force-feeds Us Music... Everywhere And All The Time... Sewage-water Music In Which Music Is Dying.

Once Her Love Had Been Publicized, It Would Gain Weight, Become A Burden.

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

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.

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.

Through The Air Floated Only Important Words, And Flajsman Said To Himself That Love Has But One True Measure, And That Is Death. At The End Of True Love Is Death, And Only The Love That Ends In Death Is Love.

Man Reckons With Immortality, And Forgets To Reckon With Death.

The Novel Is Not The Author's Confession; It Is An Investigation Of Human Life In The Trap The World Has Become

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.

There Is No Perfection Only Life

Sometimes You Make Up Your Mind About Something Without Knowing Why, And Your Decision Persists By The Power Of Inertia. Every Year It Gets Harder To Change.

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.

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)

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.

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.

But Which Was The Real Me? Let Me Be Perfectly Honest: I Was A Man Of Many Faces. (p.33)

No One Can Get Really Drunk On A Novel Or A Painting, But Who Can Help Getting Drunk On Reethoven's Ninth, Rartok's Sonata For Two Pianos And Percussion, Or The Reatles' White Album?

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