For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?

In Tereza's eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood

The novelist's ambition is not to do something better than his predecessors but to see what they did not see, say what they did not say.

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 life resembled the sweetest of dreams, the more sensitive she was to its magic, and more than once she shed tears when the ungrateful daughter in a sentimental film embraced the neglected father as the windows of the happy family's house shone out into the dying day.

A single metaphor can give birth to love.

Now time has a very different look; it is no longer the conquering present capturing the future; it is the present conquered and captured and carried off by the past.

Pain doesn't listen to reason, it has it's own reason, which is not reasonable