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

-Milan Kundera

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We Are Born One

Milan Kundera

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

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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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

War And Culture, Those Are The Two Poles Of Europe, Her Heaven And Hell, Her Glory And Shame, And They Cannot Be Separated From One Another. When One Comes To An End, The Other Will End Also And One Cannot End Without The Other. The Fact That No War Has Broken Out In Europe For Fifty Years Is Connected In Some Mysterious Way With The Fact That For Fifty Years No New Picasso Has Appeared Either.

Metaphors Are Dangerous. Love Begins With A Metaphor

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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.

I Have A Strong Will To Love You For Eternity.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Finding Yourself

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

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

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

A Constant Interrogation.

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.

...people Don't Respect The Morning. An Alarm Clock Violently Wakes Them Up, Shatters Their Sleep Like The Blow Of An Ax, And They Immediately Surrender Themselves To Deadly Haste. Can You Tell Me What Kind Of Day Can Follow A Beginning Of Such Violence? What Happens To People Whose Alarm Clock Daily Gives Them A Small Electric Shock? Each Day They Become More Used To Violence And Less Used To Pleasure.

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.

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

She Had An Overwhelming Desire To Tell Him, Like The Most Banal Of Women. Don't Let Me Go, Hold Me Tight, Make Me Your Plaything, Your Slave, Be Strong! But They Were Words She Could Not Say. The Only Thing She Said When He Released Her From His Embrace Was, "you Don't Know How Happy I Am To Be With You." That Was The Most Her Reserved Nature Allowed Her To Express.

Overwhelming Desire

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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.

Happiness Is The Longing For Repetition.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

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

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.

There Is No Perfection Only Life

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

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

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

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.

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.

...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.

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

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 Serial Number Of A Human Specimen Is The Face, That Accidental And Unrepeatable Combination Of Features. It Reflects Neither Character Nor Soul, Nor What We Call The Self. The Face Is Only The Serial Number Of A Specimen

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

When The Heart Speaks, The Mind Finds It Indecent To Object.

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?

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?

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 Border Between Good And Evil Is Terribly Fuzzy.

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.

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.

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?

But When The Strong Were Too Weak To Hurt The Weak, The Weak Had To Be Strong Enough To Leave.

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

Rules Of The Game

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

...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.

Those Boobs Of Yours Are Ubiquitous - Like God!

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.

How Goodness Heightens Beauty!

Totalitarianism Is Neither Left Nor Right, And Within Its Empire Both Will Perish. I Was Never A Believer, But After Seeing Czech Catholics Persecuted During The Stalinist Terror, I Felt The Deepest Solidarity With Them. What Separated Us, The Belief In God, Was Secondary To What United Us. In Prague, They Hanged The Socialists And The Priests. Thus A Fraternity Of The Hanged Was Born.

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.

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.

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 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!

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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

Mankind's Real Moral Test, A Test So Radical And So Deep That It Escapes Our Gaze, Is Probably The One Of Its Relations With Those That Are The Most At Its Mercy; The Animals.

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.

The Reign Of Imagagology Begins Where History Ends.

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

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

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

Optimism Is The Opium Of The People.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Those Who Consider The Devil To Be A Partisan Of Evil And Angels To Be Warriors For Good Accept The Demagogy Of The Angels. Things Are Clearly More Complicated.

A Single Metaphor Can Give Birth To Love.

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.

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

Necessity Knows No Magic Formulae-they Are All Left To Chance. If A Love Is To Be Unforgettable, Fortuities Must Immediately Start Fluttering Down To It Like Birds To Francis Of Assisi's Shoulders.

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

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

Only The Most Naive Of Questions Are Truly Serious.

Questions And Answers

Sad Company Is Bad Company.

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

In Tereza's Eyes, Books Were The Emblems Of A Secret Brotherhood

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!

What I Need Most Of All Is Certainty.

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

A Man Is Responsible For His Ignorance.

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

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

Only Animals Were Not Expelled From Paradise.

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

Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Metaphors Are Dangerous. Love Begins With A Metaphor. Which Is To Say, Love Begins At The Point When A Woman Enters Her First Word Into Our Poetic Memory.

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

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

This Was Exactly What The Girl Had Most Dreaded All Her Life And Had Scrupulously Avoided Until Now: Lovemaking Without Emotion Or Love. She Knew That She Had Crossed The Forbidden Boundary, But She Proceeded Across It Without Objections And As A Full Participant; Only Somewhere, Far Off In A Corner Of Her Consciousness, Did She Feel Horror At The Thought That She Had Never Known Such Pleasure, Never So Much Pleasure As At This Moment--beyond That Boundary.

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.

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

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.

Business Only Has Two Functions - Innovation And Marketing.

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

But Deep Down She Said To Herself, Franz Maybe Strong, But His Strength Is Directed Outward; When It Comes To The People He Lives With, The People He's Loves, He's Weak. Franz's Weakness Is Called Goodness. Franz Would Never Give Sabina Orders. He Would Never Command Her, As Tomas Had, To Lay The Mirror On The Floor And Walk Back And Forth On It Naked. Not That He Lacks Sensuality; He Simply Lacks The Strength To Give Orders. There Are Things That Can Be Accomplished Only By Violence. Physical Love Is Unthinkable Without Violence.

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.

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.

It Is Wrong To Chide The Novel For Being Fascinated By Mysterious Coincidences... But It Is Right To Chide Man For Being Blind To Such Coincidences In His Daily Life. For He Thereby Deprives His Life A Dimension Of Beauty.

Youth Is Terrible: It Is A Stage Trod By Children In Buskins And A Variety Of Costumes Mouthing Speeches They've Memorized And Fanatically Believe But Only Half Understand. And History Is Terrible Because It So Often Ends Up A Playground For The Immature; A Playground For The Young Nero, A Playground For The Young Bonaparte, A Playground For The Easily Roused Mobs Of Children Whose Simulated Passions And Simplistic Poses Suddenly Metamorphose Into A Catastrophically Real Reality.

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

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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Reason Is That Everyone Has Trouble Accepting The Fact That He Will Disappear Unheard Of And Unnoticed In An Indifferent Universe, And Everyone Wants To Make Himself Into A Universe Of Words Before It's Too Late. Once The Writer In Every Individual Comes To Life (and That Time Is Not Far Off), We Are In For An Age Of Universal Deafness And Lack Of Understanding.

A Man Possessed With Peace Is Always Smiling

It Takes So Little, So Infinitely Little, For A Person To Cross The Border Beyond Which Everything Loses Meaning: Love, Convictions, Faith, History. Human Life -- And Herein Lies Its Secret -- Takes Place In The Immediate Proximity Of That Border, Even In Direct Contact With It; It Is Not Miles Away, But A Fraction Of An Inch.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

...she Merely Wished To Find A Way Out Of The Maze. She Knew That She Had Become A Burden To Him: She Took Things Too Seriously, Turning Everything Into A Tragedy, And Failed To Grasp The Lightness And Amusing Insignificance Of Physical Love. How She Wished She Could Learn Lightness! She Yearned For Someone To Help Her Out Of Her Anachronistic Shell.

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

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.

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.

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.

Speak Truth To Power.

Speak The Truth

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

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

Serious Subjects

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 Political Jargon Of Those Days, The Word "intellectual" Was An Insult. It Indicated Someone Who Did Not Understand Life And Was Cut Off From The People. All The Communists Who Were Hanged At The Time By Other Communists Were Awarded Such Abuse. Unlike Those Who Had Their Feet Solidly On The Ground, They Were Said To Float In The Air. So It Was Fair, In A Way, That As Punishment The Ground Was Permanently Pulled Out From Under Their Feet, That They Remained Suspended A Little Above The Floor.

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

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

A Great Deal Has Been Said About Love At First Sight; I Am Perfectly Aware Of Love's Retrospective Tendency To Make A Legend Of Itself, Turn Its Beginnings Into Myth; So I Don't Want To Assert That It Was Love; But I Have No Doubt There Was A Kind Of Clairvoyance At Work: I Immediately Felt, Sensed, Grasped The Essence Of Lucie's Being Or, To Be More Precise, The Essence Of What She Was Later To Become For Me; Lucie Had Revealed Herself To Me The Way Religious Truth Reveals Itself.

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

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.

Love Is A Desire For That Lost Half Of Ourselves.

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

Is Not Parody The Eternal Lot Of Man?

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