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Making Love With A Woman And Sleeping With A Woman Are Two Separate Passions, Not Merely Different But Opposite. Love Does Not Make Itself Felt In The Desire For Copulation (a Desire That Extends To An Infinite Number Of Women) But In The Desire For Shared Sleep (a Desire Limited To One Woman).

-Milan Kundera

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Making Love With A

Milan Kundera

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Making Love With A Woman And Sleeping With A Woman Are Two Separate Passions, Not Merely Different But Opposite. Love Does Not Make Itself Felt In The Desire For Copulation (a Desire That Extends To An Infinite Number Of Women) But In The Desire For Shared Sleep (a Desire Limited To One Woman).

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Memory Does Not Make Films, It Makes Photographs.

When We Want To Give Expression To A Dramatic Situation In Our Lives, We Tend To Use Metaphors Of Heaviness. We Say That Something Has Become A Great Burden To Us. We Either Bear The Burden Or Fail And Go Down With It, We Struggle With It, Win Or Lose. And Sabina - What Had Come Over Her? Nothing. She Had Left A Man Because She Felt Like Leaving Him. Had He Persecuted Her? Had He Tried To Take Revenge On Her? No. Her Drama Was A Drama Not Of Heaviness But Of Lightness. What Fell To Her Lot Was Not The Burden, But The Unbearable Lightness Of Being.

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.

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.

The Best Actors Do Not Let The Wheels Show.

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.

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

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.

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

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!

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 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?

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.

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

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.

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.

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

In Eroticism As Dance: One Of The Partners Is Always Charged With Leading The Other.

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.

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.

To Laugh Is To Live Profoundly.

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?

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

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.

But Isn't It True That An Author Can Write Only About Himself?

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

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

Dogs Are Our Link To Paradise.

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)

Physical Love Is Unthinkable Without Violence.

Metaphors Are Dangerous. Love Begins With A Metaphor

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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.

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

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

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.

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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?

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

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.

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.

Living For Sabina Meant Seeing. Seeing Is Limited By Two Borders: Strong Light, Which Blinds, And Total Darkness. Perhaps That Was What Motivated Sabina's Distaste For All Extremism. Extremes Mean Borders Beyond Which Life Ends, And A Passion For Extremism, In Art And In Politics, Is A Veiled Longing For Death.

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.)

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

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

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

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

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.

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

...in Our Time Art Is Encrusted With A Noisy, Opaque, Logorrhea Of Theory That Prevents A Work From Coming Into Direct, Media Free, Non-interpreted Contact With Its Viewer (its Reader, Its Listener)

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

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

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

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

All Great Novels, All True Novels, Are Bisexual.

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.

No Love Can Survive Muteness.

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.

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

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

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

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

Tereza Knew What Happens During The Moment Love Is Born: The Woman Cannot Resist The Voice Calling Forth Her Terrified Soul; The Man Cannot Resist The Woman Whose Soul Thus Responds To His Voice.

Beauty Is A Rebellion Against Time.

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

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.

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.

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.

Perhaps All The Questions We Ask Of Love, To Measure, Test, Probe, And Save It, Have The Additional Effect Of Cutting It Short.

In Tereza’s Eyes, Books Were The Emblems Of A Secret Brotherhood. For She Had But A Single Weapon Against The World Of Crudity Surrounding Her: The Novels. She Had Read Any Number Of Them, From Fielding To Thomas Mann. They Not Only Offered The Possibility Of An Imaginary Escape From A Life She Found Unsatisfying; They Also Had A Meaning For Her As Physical Objects: She Loved To Walk Down The Street With A Book Under Her Arm. It Had The Same Significance For Her As An Elegant Cane From The Dandy A Century Ago. It Differentiated Her From Others.

While People Are Fairly Young And The Musical Composition Of Their Lives Is Still In Its Opening Bars, They Can Go About Writing It Together And Sharing Motifs (the Way Tomas And Sabina Exchanged The Motif Of The Bowler Hat), But If They Meet When They Are Older, Like Franz And Sabina, Their Musical Compositions Are More Or Less Complete, And Every Motif, Every Object, Every Word Means Something Different To Each Of Them.

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

Only The Most Naive Of Questions Are Truly Serious.

Questions And Answers

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.

Making Love With A Woman And Sleeping With A Woman Are Two Separate Passions, Not Merely Different But Opposite. Love Does Not Make Itself Felt In The Desire For Copulation (a Desire That Extends To An Infinite Number Of Women) But In The Desire For Shared Sleep (a Desire Limited To One Woman).

When You Sit Face To Face With Someone Who Is Pleasant, Respectful, And Polite, You Have Hard Time Reminding Yourself That Nothing He Says Is True/sincere.

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

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

Mankind's True Moral Test, Its Fundamental Test (which Lies Deeply Buried From View), Consists Of Its Attitude Towards Those Who Are At Its Mercy: Animals. And In This Respect Mankind Has Suffered A Fundamental Debacle, A Debacle So Fundamental That All Others Stem From It.

A Constant Interrogation.

Today I Know This: When It Comes Time To Take Stock, The Most Painful Wound Is That Of Broken Friendships; And There Is Nothing More Foolish Than To Sacrifice A Friendship To Politics.

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.

Yes, If You're Looking For Infinity, Just Close Your Eyes!

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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.

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.

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

Yes, It Was Too Late, And Sabina Knew She Would Leave Paris, Move On, And On Again, Because Were She To Die Here They Would Cover Her Up With A Stone, And In The Mind Of A Woman For Whom No Place Is Home The Thought Of An End To All Flight Is Unbearable.

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 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.

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.

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

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 Act Is Of Itself Either Good Or Bad. Only Its Place In The Order Of Things Makes It Good Or Bad.

The Longing For Order Is At The Same Time A Longing For Death, Because Life Is An Incessant Disruption Of Order.

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.

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

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

The Greater The Ambiguity, The Greater The Pleasure.

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 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.

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

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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

Anyone Whose Goal Is 'something Higher' Must Expect Someday To Suffer Vertigo. What Is Vertigo? Fear Of Falling? No, Vertigo Is Something Other Than Fear Of Falling. It Is The Voice Of The Emptiness Below Us Which Tempts And Lures Us, It Is The Desire To Fall, Against Which, Terrified, We Defend Ourselves.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Definition Of Love

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Only Animals Were Not Expelled From Paradise.

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.

...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.

There Are Moments In Life When A Man Retreats Defensively, When He Must Give Ground, When He Must Surrender Less Important Positions In Order To Protect The More Important Ones. But Should It Come To The Very Last, The Most Important One, At This Point A Man Must Halt And Stand Firm If He Doesn't Want To Begin Life All Over Again With Idle Hands And A Feeling Of Being Shipwrecked.

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?

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?

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.

But Man, Because He Has Only One Life To Live, Cannot Conduct Experiments To Test Whether To Follow His Passion (compassion) Or Not.

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

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?

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

Laughing Deeply Is Living Deeply.

Kitsch Causes Two Tears To Flow In Quick Succession. The First Tear Says: How Nice To See Children Running On The Grass! The Second Tear Says: How Nice To Be Moved, Together With All Mankind, By Children Running On The Grass!

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

Happiness Is The Longing For Repetition.

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

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

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

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

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.

I Am Not In Favor Of Imposing Happiness On People. Everyone Has A Right To His Bad Wine, To His Stupidity, And To His Dirty Fingernails.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

A Man Is Responsible For His Ignorance.

What I Love In A Woman Is Not What She Is In And For Herself, But The Side Of Herself She Turns Towards Me, What She Is For Me. I Love Her As Character In Our Common Love Story. What Wuld Hamlet Be Without The Castle At Elsinore, Without Ophelia, Without All The Concrete Situations He Goes Through, What Would He Be Without The Text Of His Part? What Would Be Left But An Empty, Dumb, Illusory Essence?

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.

...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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Rules Of The Game

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.

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

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.

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

People Fascinated By The Idea Of Progress Never Suspect That Every Step Forward Is Also A Step On The Way To The End.

Flirting Is A Promise Of Sexual Intercourse Without A Guarantee.

A Man Who Loses His Privacy Loses Everything. And A Man Who Gives It Up Of His Own Free Will Is A Monster.

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.

La Memoria No Guarda Películas, Guarda Fotografías.

Perhaps The Reason We Are Unable To Love Is That We Yearn To Be Loved, That Is, We Demand Something - Love - From Our Partner Instead Of Delivering Ourselves Up To Him Demand-free And Asking For Nothing But His Company.

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

Is Not Parody The Eternal Lot Of Man?

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 Reign Of Imagagology Begins Where History Ends.

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.

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

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.

The Beauty Of New York Is Unintentional; It Arose Independent Of Human Design, Like A Stalagmite Cavern.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

What I Need Most Of All Is Certainty.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Sad Company Is Bad Company.

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 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.

The Senator Had Only One Argument In His Favour: His Feeling. When The Heart Speaks, The Mind Finds It Indecent To Object. In The Realm Of Kitsch, The Dictatorship Of The Heart Reigns Supreme.

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

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