We are born one time only, we can never start a new life equipped with the experience we've gained from the previous one. We leave childhood without knowing what youth is, we marry without knowing what it is to be married, and even when we enter old age, we don't know what it is we're heading for: the old are innocent children innocent of thier old age. In that sense, man's world is the planet of inexperience.
Milan KunderaFortunately women have the miraculous ability to change the meaning of their actions after the event.
Milan KunderaI understood that there was no escaping the memories, that I was surround by them. (p.30)
Milan KunderaAnd I ran after that voice through the streets so as not to lose sight of the splendid wreath of bodies gliding over the city, and I realized with anguish in my heart that they were flying like birds and I was falling like a stone, that they had wings and I would never have any.
Milan KunderaBut which was the real me? Let me be perfectly honest: I was a man of many faces. (p.33)
Milan KunderaBut when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.
Milan KunderaThe phrase "It's absolutely the same with me, I..." seems to be an approving echo, a way of continuing the other's thought, but that is an illusion: in reality it is a brute revolt against a brutal violence, an effort to free our own ear from bondage and to occupy the enemy's ear by force. Because all of man's life among his kind is nothing other than a battle to seize the ear of others.
Milan Kundera