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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.

-Milan Kundera

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To Die; To Decide

Milan Kundera

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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

Serious Subjects

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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.

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

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

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.

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

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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

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.

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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.

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.

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

A Worker May Be The Hammer's Master, But The Hammer Still Prevails. A Tool Knows Exactly How It Is Meant To Be Handled, While The User Of The Tool Can Only Have An Approximate Idea.

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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.

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

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

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.

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Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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

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Love Is A Desire For That Lost Half Of Ourselves.

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Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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

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

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... 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.

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.

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

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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.

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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.

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

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.

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

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Sad Company Is Bad Company.

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...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.

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Ambition Is A Poor Excuse For Not Having Sense Enough To Be Lazy.

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.

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.

She Regarded Books As The Emblems Of Secret Brotherhood. A Man With This Sort Of Library Couldn't Possibly Hurt Her.

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

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

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

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

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.

Revolution In Love’. Can You Tell Me What You Mean By That? Do You Want Free Love As Against Bourgeois Marriage, Or Monogamy As Against Bourgeois Promiscuity?

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

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

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A Constant Interrogation.

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.

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.

How Goodness Heightens Beauty!

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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 Sound Of Laughter Is Like The Vaulted Dome Of A Temple Of Happiness.

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

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.

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

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

Immortality No Longer Interests The Weary Old Man At All.

[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.

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

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.

Flirting Is A Promise Of Sexual Intercourse Without A Guarantee.

I Understand You, And I Shall Not Attempt To Make You Change Your Mind. I Am Too Old To Want To Improve The World. I Have Told You What I Think, And That Is All. I Shall Remain Your Friend Even If You Act Contrary To My Convictions, And I Shall Help You Even If I Disagree With You.

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

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

Beauty Is A Rebellion Against Time.

Business Only Has Two Functions - Innovation And Marketing.

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

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

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

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.

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)

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

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.

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

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.

There Is Such A Thing As Everyday, Ordinary, Vulgar Ecstasy; The Ecstasy Of Anger, The Ecstasy Of Speed At The Wheel, The Ecstasy Of Ear-splitting Noise, Ecstasy In The Soccer Stadium.

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

High Culture Is Nothing But A Child Of That European Perversion Called History, The Obsession We Have With Going Forward, With Considering The Sequence Of Generations A Relay Race In Which Everyone Surpasses His Predecessor, Only To Be Surpassed By His Successor. Without This Relay Race Called History There Would Be No European Art And What Characterizes It: A Longing For Originality, A Longing For Change. Robespierre, Napoleon, Beethoven, Stalin, Picasso, They're All Runners In The Relay Race, They All Belong To The Same Stadium.

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 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?

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Coincidence In Life

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 Greek Word For "return" Is Nostos. Algos Means "suffering." So Nostalgia Is The Suffering Caused By An Unappeased Yearning To Return.

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

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

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.

Noise Has One Advantage. It Drowns Out Words.

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.

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

Solitude: A Sweet Absence Of Looks.

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

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.

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.

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

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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

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

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

Rules Of The Game

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.

There Are Metaphysical Problems, Problems Of Human Existence, That Philosophy Has Never Known How To Grasp In All Their Concreteness And That Only The Novel Can Seize.

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

Physical Love Is Unthinkable Without Violence.

A Man Possessed With Peace Is Always Smiling

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.

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.

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

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

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

For Sabina, Living In Truth, Lying Neither To Ourselves Nor To Others, Was Possible Only Away From The Public: The Moment Someone Keeps An Eye On What We Do, We Involuntarily Make Allowances For That Eye, And Nothing We Do Is Truthful. Having A Public, Keeping A Public In Mind, Means Living In Lies.

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!

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

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