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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

-Milan Kundera

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If We Cannot Accept

Milan Kundera

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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

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

Speak Truth To Power.

Speak The Truth

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

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.

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Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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

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

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.

Immortality No Longer Interests The Weary Old Man At All.

How Could She Feel Nostalgia When He Was Right In Front Of Her? How Can You Suffer From The Absence Of A Person Who Is Present? You Can Suffer Nostalgia In The Presence Of The Beloved If You Glimpse A Future Where The Beloved Is No More.

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

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

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

The Word Change, So Dear To Our Europe, Has Been Given A New Meaning: It No Longer Means A New Stage Of Coherent Development (as It Was Understood By Vico, Hegel Or Marx), But A Shift From One Side To Another, From Front To Back, From The Back To The Left, From The Left To The Front (as Understood By Designers Dreaming Up The Fashion For The Next Season).

Looking Out Over The Courtyard At The Dirty Walls, He Realized He Had No Idea Whether It Was Hysteria Or Love.

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.

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

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)

Situations In Life

Merely By Being Born Intelligent, You Right Away Find Yourself In Absolute Exile.

Finding Yourself

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.

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

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

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

At The End Of True Love Is Death, And Only The Love That Ends In Death Is Love.

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.

A Constant Interrogation.

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 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.

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.

Dogs Are Our Link To Paradise.

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

Serious Subjects

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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.

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.

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.

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

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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.

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.

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)

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

Young Is The One That Plunges In The Future And Never Looks Back.

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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.

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A Man Is Responsible For His Ignorance.

A Single Metaphor Can Give Birth To Love.

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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.

The Greater The Ambiguity, The Greater The Pleasure.

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.

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

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

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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.

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

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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.

She Knew, Of Course That She Was Being Supremely Unfair, That Franz Was The Best Man She Ever Had- He Was Intelligent, He Understood Her Paintings, He Was Handsome And Good-but The More She Thought About It, The More She Longed To Ravish His Intelligence, Defile His Kindheartedness, And Violate His Powerless Strength

... 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.

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

How Goodness Heightens Beauty!

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.

Laughter, On The Other Hand, " Petrarch Went On, "is An Explosion That Tears Us Away From The World And Throws Us Back Into Our Own Cold Solitude. Joking Is A Barrier Between Man And The World. Joking Is The Enemy Of Love And Poetry. That's Why I Tell You Yet Again, And You Want To Keep In Mind: Boccaccio Doesn't Understand Love. Love Can Never Be Laughable. Love Has Nothing In Common With Laughter.

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

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.

What I Need Most Of All Is Certainty.

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.

Solitude: A Sweet Absence Of Looks.

...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.

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

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.

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

Definition Of Love

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.

Only After A While Did It Occur To Me (in Spite Of The Chilly Silence Which Surrounded Me) That My Story Was Not Of The Tragic Sort, But Rather Of The Comic Variety. At Any Rate That Afforded Me Some Comfort.

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

We All Reject Out Of Hand The Idea That The Love Of Our Life May Be Something Light Or Weightless; We Presume Our Love Is What Must Be, That Without It Our Life Would No Longer Be The Same; We Feel That Beethoven Himself, Gloomy And Awe-inspiring, Is Playing The “es Muss Sein!” To Our Own Great Love.

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

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

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.

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

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?

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.

In The Love Poetry Of Every Age, The Woman Longs To Be Weighed Down By The Man's Body.

But If God Is Gone And Man Is No Longer Master, Then Who Is Master?

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

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.

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?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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".

The First Step In Liquidating A People Is To Erase Its Memory. Destroy Its Books, Its Culture, Its History.

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.

Speed Is The Form Of Ecstasy The Technical Revolution Has Bestowed On Man. As Opposed To A Motorcyclist, The Runner Is Always Present In His Body, Forever Required To Think About His Blisters, His Exhaustion; When He Runs He Feels His Weight, His Age, More Conscious Than Ever Of Himself And Of His Time Of Life. This All Changes When Man Delegates The Faculty Of Speed To A Machine: From Then On, His Own Body Is Outside The Process, And He Gives Over To A Speed That Is Noncorporeal, Nonmaterial, Pure Speed, Speed Itself, Ecstasy Speed.

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

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.

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

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

The Worth Of A Human Being Lies In The Ability To Extend Oneself, To Go Outside Oneself, To Exist In And For Other People.

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.

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

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?

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

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!

What Does It Mean To Live In Truth? Putting It Negatively Is Easy Enough: It Means Not Lying, Not Hiding, And Not Dissimulating.

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

Living, There Is No Happiness In That. Living: Carrying One’s Painful Self Through The World. But Being, Being Is Happiness. Being: Becoming A Fountain, A Fountain On Which The Universe Falls Like Warm Rain.

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

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

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?

Most People Willingly Deceive Themselves With A Doubly False Faith; They Believe In Eternal Memory (of Men, Things, Deeds, Peoples) And In Rectification (of Deeds, Errors, Sins, Injustice). Both Are Sham. The Truth Lies At The Opposite End Of The Scale: Everything Will Be Forgotten And Nothing Will Be Rectified. All Rectification (both Vengeance And Forgiveness) Will Be Taken Over By Oblivion.

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

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.

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.

Only Animals Were Not Expelled From Paradise.

Nothing Requires A Greater Effort Of Thought Than Arguments To Justify The Rule Of Non-thought.

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.

There Would Seem To Be Nothing More Obvious, More Tangible And Palpable Than The Present Moment. And Yet It Eludes Us Completely. All The Sadness Of Life Lies In That Fact. In The Course Of A Single Second, Our Senses Of Sight, Of Hearing, Of Smell, Register (knowingly Or Not) A Swarm Of Events And A Parade Of Sensations And Ideas Passes Through Our Head. Each Instant Represents A Little Universe, Irrevocably Forgotten In The Next Instant.

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

Human Condition

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 Pressure To Make Public Retractions Of Past Statements - There's Something Medieval About It. What Does It Mean, Anyway, To 'retract' What You've Said? How Can Anyone State Categorically That A Thought He Once Had Is No Longer Valid? In Modern Times An Idea Can Be Refuted, Yes, But Not Retracted.

The Girl Was Grateful To The Young Man For Every Bit Of Flattery; She Wanted To Linger For A Moment In Its Warmth And So She Said, 'you're Very Good At Lying.' 'do I Look Like A Liar?' 'you Look Like You Enjoy Lying To Women,' Said The Girl, And Into Her Words There Crept Unawares A Touch Of The Old Anxiety, Because She Really Did Believe That Her Young Man Enjoyed Lying To Women.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Our Dreams Prove That To Imagine - To Dream About Things That Have Not Happened - Is Among Mankind's Deepest Needs.

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

Coincidence In Life

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

When She Is Older She Will See In These Resemblances A Regrettable Uniformity Among Individuals (they All Stop At The Same Spots To Kiss, Have The Same Tastes In Clothing, Flatter A Woman With The Same Metaphor) And A Tedious Monotony Among Events (they Are All Just An Endless Repetition Of The Same One); But In Her Adolescence She Welcomes These Coincidences As Miraculous And She Is Avid To Decipher Their Meanings.

No Love Can Survive Muteness.

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 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?

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

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.

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.

To Be A Writer Does Not Mean To Preach A Truth, It Means To Discover A Truth.

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

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

Sad Company Is Bad Company.

All Great Novels, All True Novels, Are Bisexual.

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

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

Happiness Is The Longing For Repetition.

...[p]eople Who Shout Joy From The Rooftops Are Often The Saddest Of All... (p.24)

You Think That Just Because It's Already Happened, The Past Is Finished And Unchangeable? Oh No, The Past Is Cloaked In Multicolored Taffeta And Every Time We Look At It We See A Different Hue.

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.

Those Boobs Of Yours Are Ubiquitous - Like God!

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

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

Beauty Is A Rebellion Against Time.

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.

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.

A Man Possessed With Peace Is Always Smiling

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

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.

Joking Is A Barrier Between Man And The World. Joking Is The Enemy Of Love And Poetry.

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

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?

I Find Myself Fascinating.

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.

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.

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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?

Common European Thought Is The Fruit Of The Immense Toil Of Translators. Without Translators, Europe Would Not Exist; Translators Are More Important Than Members Of The European Parliament.

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

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

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 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.

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

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

Is Not Parody The Eternal Lot Of Man?

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.

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Arthur Eddington

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