The incredible lightness of being - Milan Kundena

• There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weights so heavy as the pain one feeld with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination
• In Terezas eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood
• Communism was merely another father, a father equally strict and limited, a father who forbade
• If you're looking for infinity, just close your eyes
• Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most narive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answer
• Tereza suddenly recalled the first days of the invasion. People in every city and town had pulled down the street signs; sign posts had disappeared. Overnight, the country had become nameless. For seven days, Russian troops wandered the countryside, not knowing where they were. The officers searched for newspaper offices, for television and radio stations to occupy, but could not find them. Whenever they asked, they would get either a shrug of the shoulders or false names and directions.
• Insofar as it is possible to divide people into categories, the surest criterion is the deep-seated desires that orient them to one or another lifelong activity. Every Frenchman is different. But all actors the world over are similar... An actor is someone who in early chilfhood consents to exhibit himself for the rest of his life to an anonymous public. Without that basic consent, which has nothing to do with talent, which goes deeper than talent, no one can become an actor. Similarly, a doctor is someone who consents to spend his life involved with human bodies and all that they entail.
• Here he was, doing things he didnt care a damn about, and enjoying it. Now he understood what made people happy when they took a job without feeling the compulsion of an internal "Es muss sein!" and forgot it the moment they left for home every evening. This was the first time he had felt that blissful indifference. [...] The "Es muss sein" of his profession (a doctor) had been like a vampire sucking blood.
• And again he thought the thought we already know: 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 decisions: we are not granted a second, third or fouth life in which to compare various decisions.
• And not wonder: Political movements rest not so much on rational attitudes as on the fantasies, images, words, and archetypes that come together to make up this or that political kitsch.
• 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 had usurped for himself over the cow and the horse.
• If Karenin had been a person instead of a dog, he would surely have long since said to Tereza, "Look, I'm sick and tired of carrying that roll in my mouth every day. Cant you come up with something different?" And tehrein lies the whole of mans 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.