Celui qui éprouve de l’aversion pour les danseurs et veut les dénigrer se heurtera toujours à un obstacle infranchissable : leur honnêteté ; car en s’exposant constamment au public, le danseur se condamne à être...

When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The...

— ,Y por qué tuvo que elegir precisamente a Alzbeta? —gritó el médico jefe.—Precisamente porque no había ningún motivo. Si hubiera algún motivo, podríaencontrarse de antemano y mi actitud podría determinarse de antemano. Precisamente en...

I bambini sono senza passato ed è questo tutto il mistero dell’innocenza magica del loro sorriso…

Anyone whose goal is ‘something higher’ must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below...

Bėgant metams, ji ims įžvelgti visuose šiuose panašumuose žmonių suvienodėjimą (žmonės norėdami pasibučiuoti visi iki vieno sustoja toje pačioje vietoje, visi rengiasi vienodai, girdami moterį vartoja tas pačias metaforas) ir alinamą įvykių monotoniją (įvykių, kurie...

Quien se entrega a otro como un soldado que se rinde, debe hacer previamente entrega de cualquier tipo de arma. Y si se queda sin defensa alguna ante un ataque, no podrá evitar preguntarse: ,Cuándo...

given the nature of the human couple, the love of a man and a woman is a priori inferior to that which can exist (at least in the best instances) in the love between man...

The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have...

He looked at her and tried to discover behind her lascivious expression the familiar features that he loved tenderly. It was as if he were looking at two images through the same lens, at two...

A man is responsible for his ignorance.

…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...

It is a tragicomic fact that our proper upbringing has become an ally of the secret police. (…) The “Tell the truth!” imperative drummed into us so automatically that we feel ashamed of lying even...

o gün akşamüstü son bir defa daha kırlarda dolaşmaya çıktığında yaşadığı tuhaf bir anı hatırladı: bir dere kıyısına gelmiş, çimenlere uzanmıştı. uzun süre orada öylece uzanmış, akarsuyun ta içinden geçerek bütün acıları ve bütün pislikleri;...

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...

It’s not your enemies who condemn you to solitude, it’s your friends

Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing...

vivre dans la vérité, ne mentir ni à soi-même ni aux autres, ce n’est possible qu’à la condition de vivre sans public. Dès lors qu’il y a un témoin à nos actes, nous nous adaptons...

Youth is a terrible thing: it is a stage trod by children in buskins and fancy costumes mouthing speeches they’ve memorized and fanatically believe but only half understand

Isn’t that exactly the definition of biography? An artificial logic imposed on an ‘incoherent succession of images’?

Tereza knew what happens during the moment love is born: the woman cannot resist the voice calling forth her terrified soul; the man cannot resist the woman whose soul thus responds to his voice.

We will never cease our critique of those persons who distort the past, rewrite it, falsify it, who exaggerate the importance of one event and fail to mention some other; such a critique is proper...

The novel’s spirit is the spirit of complexity. . . . The novel’s spirit is the spirity of continuity . . . a thing made to last, to connect the past with the future.

The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad...

That conversation with the taxi driver suddenly made clear to me the essence of the writer’s occupation. We write books because our children aren’t interested in us. We address ourselves to an anonymous world because...

Al final del verdadero amor está la muerte y sólo un amor que termina en muerte es amor

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.

The novel was born with the Modern Era, which made man, to quote Heidegger, the “only real subject,” the ground for everything. It is largely through the novel that man as an individual was established...

She was aware that in love even the most passionate idealism will not rid the body’s surface of its terrible, basic importance.

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...

The ludicrous element in our feeling does not make them any less authentic.

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...

[Large countries’] patriotism is different: they are buoyed by their glory, their importance, their universal mission. The Czechs loved their country not because it was glorious but because it was unknown; not because it was...

Does he love me? Does he love anyone more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it,...

Art must always stand guard against stirring emotions that lie outside the aesthetic: sexual arousal, terror, disgust, shock.

When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.

En vivant votre misère, vous pouvez être malheureuse ou heureuse. C’est dans ce choix que consiste votre liberté. Vous êtes libre de fondre votre individualité dans la marmite de la multitude avec un sentiment de...

Revolution and youth are closely allied. What can a revolution promise to adults? To some it brings disgrace, to others favor. But even that favor is questionable, for it affects only the worse half of...

Quería comprobar si la tristeza, sobre la cual el poderoso ideólogo afirmaba que es enfermiza y perjudicial, podía darme, con su con consonancia, algún alegría (porque, en mi situación, difícilmente podía buscar la alegría en...

Yes, it’s a well-known fact about you: you’re like death, you take everything.

Too much faith is the worst ally. When you believe in something literally, through your faith you’ll turn it into something absurd. One who is a genuine adherent, if you like, of some political outlook,...

E qualcos’altro lo elevava: teneva sul tavolo un libro aperto. In quel bar nessuno aveva mai aperto un libro sul tavolo. Un libro era per Tereza il segno di riconoscimento di una fratellanza segreta. Contro...

for there is nothing heavier than compassion. 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...

Estoy bajo el agua y los latidos de mi corazón producen círculos en la superficie.

Es que hasta la alegría que produce la presencia del hombre a quien se ama se siente mejor a solas. Si la presencia fuera de el continua, sólo estaría presente en su constante transcurrir. Detenerla...

Jealousy has the amazing power to illuminate a single person in an intense beam of light, keeping the multitude of others in total darkness.

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...

So she stood naked in front of the young man and at this moment stopped playing the game.

This scene expresses the basic situation of immaturity; lyricism is an attempt to face that situation: the individual expelled from the protected enclosure of childhood wishes to enter the world, but at the same time,...

What we have not chosen we cannot consider either to our merit or our failure.