...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 we have no control at all over it.

Ah, ladies and gentlemen, a man lives a sad life when he cannot take anything or anyone seriously.

All lovers unconsciously establish their own rules of the game, which from the outset admit of no transgression.

Man reckons with immortality, and forgets to reckon with death.

Radio... force-feeds us music... everywhere and all the time... sewage-water music in which music is dying.

This is the real and the only reason for friendship: to provide a mirror so the other person can contemplate his image from the past, which, without the eternal blah-blah of memories between pals, would long ago have disappeared.

Tereza's mother never stopped reminding her that being a mother meant sacrificing everything. Her words had the ring of truth, backed as they were by the experience of a woman who had lost everything because of her child. Tereza would listen and believe that being a mother was the highest value in life and that being a mother was a great sacrifice. If a mother was Sacrifice personified, then a daughter was Guilt, with no possibility of redress.