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 one...
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...
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 a...
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 th...
A person who thinks should not try to persuade others to his belief; that is what puts him on the road to a system; on the lamentable road of the man of conviction; politicians like to call themselves...
The beauty of New York rests on a completely different base. It's unintentional. It arose independent of human design, like a stalagmitic cavern. Forms which are in themselves quite ugly turn up fortu...
He realized that the path of love, which Bertlef had suggested, was closed to him; it was the path of saints, not of ordinary men.
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: Tere...
Rastlantıların, sadece rastlantıların söyleyecek bir sözü vardır bize. Gereklilikten doğan, olmasını beklediğimiz, günbegün yinelenen her şey dilsizdir. Sadece rastlantılar bir şeyler söyler bize.
Our lives may be separate, but they run in the same direction, like parallel lines.
Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.
Noise has one advantage. It drowns out words.
Narodi se likvidiraju tako da im se najprije oduzme sjećanje. Unište im se knjige, obrazovanje, povijest. Netko drugi im napiše druge knjige, da im drugo obrazovanje i izmisli drugu povijest. I narod...
Man reckons with immortality, and forgets to reckon with death.
Lorsque le cœur a parlé, il n'estpas convenable que la raison élève des objections. Au royaume du Kitsch s'exerce la dictature du cœur.
La vraie bonté de l'homme ne peut se manifester en toute liberté et en toute pureté qu'à l'égard de ceux qui ne représentent aucune force. Le véritable test moral de l'humanité (le plus radical, qui s...
It was only an idea, a sudden flash, but it kept coming back to me, and I couldn't help thinking, why am I alive, what good is there in going on, but it's not true really, I didn't think anything of t...
If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.
If in the past people would listen to music out of love for music, nowadays it roars everywhere and all the time, regardless whether we want to hear it, it roars from loudspeakers, in cars, in restaur...
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 lif...