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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.

-Milan Kundera

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Graphomania (a Mania For

Milan Kundera

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

In The Sunset Of Dissolution, Everything Is Illuminated By The Aura Of Nostalgia, Even The Guillotine.

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.

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.

I Find Myself Fascinating.

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

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.

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.

The Best Actors Do Not Let The Wheels Show.

Yes, It's Crazy. Love Is Either Crazy Or It's Nothing At All.

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

And She Realized That She (her Soul) Was Not At All Involved, Only Her Body, Her Body Alone. The Body That Had Betrayed Her And That She Had Sent Out Into The World Among Other Bodies.

...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.

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

The Great European Novel Started Out As Entertainment, And Every True Novelist Is Nostalgic For It. In Fact, The Themes Of Those Great Entertainments Are Terribly Serious-think Of Cervantes!

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

But Just Make Someone Who Has Fallen In Love Listen To His Stomach Rumble, And The Unity Of Body And Soul, That Lyrical Illusion Of The Age Of Science , Instantly Fades Away.

...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.

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?

Art Arises From Sources Other Than Logic." (p.32)

A Mismatched Outfit, A Slightly Defective Denture, An Exquisite Mediocrity Of The Soul-those Are The Details That Make A Woman Real, Alive. The Women You See On Posters Or In Fashion Magazines-the Ones All The Women Try To Imitate Nowadays-how Can They Be Attractive? They Have No Reality Of Their Own; They're Just The Sum Of A Set Of Abstract Rules. They Aren't Born Of Human Bodies; They Hatch Ready-made From The Computers." ~the Book Of Laughter And Forgetting

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.

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.

The Border Between Good And Evil Is Terribly Fuzzy.

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

People Are Going Deaf Because Music Is Played Louder And Louder, But Because They're Going Deaf, It Has To Be Played Louder Still.

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.

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

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

...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.

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.

Only The Most Naive Of Questions Are Truly Serious.

Questions And Answers

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Definition Of Love

Optimism Is The Opium Of The People.

Those Boobs Of Yours Are Ubiquitous - Like God!

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?

Sad Company Is Bad Company.

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.

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.

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.

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.

For The Body Is Temporal And Thought Is Eternal And The Shimmering Essence Of Flame Is An Image Of Thought.

The Rediscovered Path, Where Were Left The Traces Of Childhood's Lost Steps.

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

... 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.

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

When His Wife Was At His Side, She Was Also In Front Of Him, Marking Out The Horizon Of His Life. Now The Horizon Is Empty: The View Has Changed.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Self Confidence

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)

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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?

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.

Nothing Yet. I've Been Waiting." "for What?" She Made No Response. She Could Not Tell Him That She Had Been Waiting For Him.

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.

Guarantees That

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Serious Subjects

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.)

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Noise Has One Advantage. It Drowns Out Words.

Pain Doesn't Listen To Reason, It Has It's Own Reason, Which Is Not Reasonable

Dogs Are Our Link To Paradise. They Don't Know Evil Or Jealousy Or Discontent.

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

As You Live Out Your Desolation, You Can Be Either Unhappy Or Happy. Having That Choice Is What Constitutes Your Freedom.

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

Great Novels Are Always A Little More Intelligent Than Their Authors.

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.

Is Not Parody The Eternal Lot Of Man?

Eroticism Is Like A Dance: One Always Leads The Other.

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

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.

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.

Dogs Are Our Link To Paradise.

Hate Traps Us By Binding Us Too Tightly To Our Adversary.

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.

The Novelist Teaches The Reader To Comprehend The World As A Question.

Metaphors Are Dangerous. Love Begins With A Metaphor

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

She Was Aware That In Love Even The Most Passionate Idealism Will Not Rid The Body's Surface Of Its Terrible, Basic Importance.

I Think, Therefore I Am' Is The Statement Of An Intellectual Who Underrates Toothaches.

The Degree Of Slowness Is Directionally Proportional To The Intensity Of Memory. The Degree Of Speed Is Directionally Proportional To The Intensity Of Forgetting.

Ah, Ladies And Gentlemen, A Man Lives A Sad Life When He Cannot Take Anything Or Anyone Seriously.

In The Realm Of Totalitarian Kitsch, All Answers Are Given In Advance And Preclude Any Questions.

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

The Worst Thing Is Not That The World Is Unfree, But That People Have Unlearned Their Liberty.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

Extremism Means Borders Beyond Which Life Ends, And A Passion For Extremism, In Art And In Politics, Is A Veiled Longing For Death.

[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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Seeing Is Limited By Two Borders: Strong Light, Which Blinds, And Total Darkness.

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

Fortunately Women Have The Miraculous Ability To Change The Meaning Of Their Actions After The Event.

What I Need Most Of All Is Certainty.

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.

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

Aren't We Living In A World Where Heedless Men Only Desire Decapitated Women?

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.

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.

Tereza's Mother Never Stopped Reminding Her That Being A Mother Meant Sacrificing Everything. Her Words Had The Ring Of Truth, Backed As They Were By The Experience Of A Woman Who Had Lost Everything Because Of Her Child. Tereza Would Listen And Believe That Being A Mother Was The Highest Value In Life And That Being A Mother Was A Great Sacrifice. If A Mother Was Sacrifice Personified, Then A Daughter Was Guilt, With No Possibility Of Redress.

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

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.

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.

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

She Is Sadder And Sadder, And For A Man There Is No Balm More Soothing Than The Sadness He Has Caused A Woman.

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.

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

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

In Her Presence I Could Dare Everything: Sincerity, Emotion, Pathos.

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.

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

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.

The Basis Of Shame Is Not Some Personal Mistake Of Ours, But The Ignominy, The Humiliation We Feel That We Must Be What We Are Without Any Choice In The Matter, And That This Humiliation Is Seen By Everyone.

Disgust At Having To Talk About Oneself Is What Distinguishes Novelistic Talent From Lyric Talent.

A Man Possessed With Peace Is Always Smiling

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.

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.

Two People In Love, Alone, Isolated From The World, That's Beautiful.

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.

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

The Moment Kafka Attracts More Attenetion Than Joseph K., Kafka's Posthumous Death Begins.

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

"pick Me Up," Is The Message Of A Person Who Keeps Falling. Tomas Kept Picking Her Up, Patiently.

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!

All Lovers Unconsciously Establish Their Own Rules Of The Game, Which From The Outset Admit Of No Transgression.

Rules Of The Game

I Have To Lie, If I Don't Want To Take Madmen Seriously And Become A Madman Myself

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

Even In The Game There Lurks A Lack Of Freedom; Even In A Game Is A Trap For The Players.

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

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.

Chance And Chance Alone Has A Message For Us. Everything That Occurs Out Of Necessity, Everything Expected, Repeated Day In And Day Out, Is Mute. Only Chance Can Speak To Us.

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.

Any New Possibility That Existence Acquires, Even The Least Likely, Transforms Everything About Existence.

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.

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.

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.

I Have A Strong Will To Love You For Eternity.

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.

Without Realizing It, The Individual Composes His Life According To The Laws Of Beauty Even In Times Of Greatest Distress.

Coincidence In Life

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.

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

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.

Humanity's True Moral Test, Its Fundamental Test…consists Of Its Attitude Towards Those Who Are At Its Mercy: Animals.

There Is A Secret Bond Between Slowness And Memory, Between Speed And Forgetting.

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.

Physical Love Is Unthinkable Without Violence.

No Episode Is A Priori Condemned To Remain An Episode Forever, For Every Event, No Matter How Trivial, Conceals Within Itself The Possibility Of Sooner Or Later Becoming The Cause Of Other Events And Thus Changing Into A Story Or An Adventure. Episodes Are Like Land Mines. The Majority Of Them Never Explode, But The Most Unremarkable Of Them May Someday Turn Into A Story That Will Prove Fateful To You.

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.

So She Stood Naked In Front Of The Young Man And At This Moment Stopped Playing The Game.

Loves Are Like Empires: When The Idea They Are Founded On Crumbles, They, Too, Fade Away.

For Existential Mathematics, Which Does Not Exist, Would Probably Propose This Equation: The Value Of Coincidence Equals The Degree Of Its Improbability.

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

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

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.

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.

Children Are The Future, Because Mankind Is Moving More And More Towards Infancy.

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

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