Jealousy is like a raging toothache. One cannot do anything when one is jealous, not even sit down. Once can only come and go. Back and forth.

Einmal ist keinmal, says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well...

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

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.

Être élu est une notion théologique qui veut dire : sans aucun mérite, par un verdict surnaturel, par une volonté libre, sinon capricieuse, de Dieu, on est choisi pour quelque chose d’exceptionnel et d’extraordinaire. C’est...

When he told F. of his disgust at the eyelid’s movement, he must have been sixteen. When he decided to study medicine, he must have been nineteen; by then, having already signed on to the...

Back at home, after some prodding from Tereza, he admitted that he had been jealous watching her dance with a colleague of his. “You mean you were really jealous?” she asked him ten times or...

It was vertigo. A heady, insuperable longing to fall. We might also call vertigo the intoxication of the weak. Aware of his weakness, a man decides to give in rather than stand up to it....