Milan Kundera

Every novel says to the reader: __hings are not as simple as you think._ That is the novel__ eternal truth, but it grows steadily harder to hear amid the din of easy, quick answers that come faster than the question and block it off. In the spirit of our time, it__ either Anna or Karenin who is right, and the ancient wisdom of Cervantes, telling us about the difficulty of knowing and the elusiveness of truth, seems cumbersome and useless.

And think about the precise meaning of that term: a Narcissus is not proud. A proud man has disdain for other people, he undervalues them. The Narcissus overvalues them, because in every person's eyes he sees his own image, and wants to embellish it. So he takes nice care of all his mirrors.

The tree of possibilities: life as it reveals itself to a man arriving, astonished, at the threshold of his adult life: an abundant treetop canopy filled with bees singing. And he thinks he understands why she never showed him the letters: she wanted to hear the murmur of the tree by herself, without him, because he, Jean-Marc, represented the abolition of all possibilities, he was the reduction, (even though it was a happy reduction) of her life to a single possibility.

For a trial is initiated not to render justice but to annihilate the defendant.Even when the trial is of dead people, the point is to kill them off a second time: by burning their books; by removing their names from the schoolbooks; by demolishing their monuments; by rechristening the streets that bore their names.

Betrayal means breaking ranks and going off into the unknown. Sabina knew of nothing more magnificent than going off into the unknown.

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.

And do you know the story about Haydn__ head? They cut it away from the still-warm cadaver so some insane scientist could take apart the brain and pinpoint the location of musical genius. And the Einstein Story? He__ carefully written his will with instructions to cremate him. They followed his orders, but his disciple, ever loyal and devoted, refused to live without the master__ gaze on him. Before the cremation, he took the eyes of the cadaver and put them in a bottle of alcohol to keep them watching him until the moment he should die himself. That__ why I said that the crematory fire is the only way our bodies can escape them. It__ the only absolute death. And I don__ want any other. Jean-Marc, I want an absolute death.

Metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with.

The old duality of body and soul has become shrouded in scientific terminology, and we can laugh at it as merely an obsolete prejudice.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 particular merit in being nice to one's fellow man... We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is a result of our emotions - love apathy, charity of malice - and what part is predetermines by the constant power play among individuals. True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buries from view), consists of attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental débâcle, a débâcle so fundamental 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.

We__e known for a long time that it was no longer possible to overturn this world, nor reshape it, nor head off its dangerous headlong rush. There__ been only one possible resistance: to not take it seriously.

In Irena__ 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.

metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love

For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves not 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. Sabina despised literature in which people give away all kinds of intimate secrets about themselves and their friends. A man who loses his privacy loses everything, Sabina thought. And a man who gives it up on his own free will is a monster. That is why Sabina did not suffer in the least from having to keep her love a secret. On the contrary, only by doing so could she live the truth.

People fascinated by the idea of progress never suspect that every step forward is also a step on the way to the end and that behind all the joyous 'onward and upward' slogans lurks the lascivious voice of death urging us to make haste.

Those who are fascinated by the idea of progress do not suspect that everything moving forward is at the same time bringing the end nearer and that joyous watchwords like "forward" and "farther" are the lascivious voice of death urging us to hasten to it. (If fascination with the word "forward" has become universal, isn't it mainly because death is already speaking to us from nearby?)

When graves are covered with stones, the dead can no longer get out. But the dead can__ go out anyway! What difference does it make whether they__e covered with soil or stones?