When we want to give expression to a dramatic situation in our lives, we tend to use metaphors of heaviness. We say that something has become a great burden to us. We either bear the burden or fail and go down with it, we struggle with it, win or lose. And Sabina - what had come over her? Nothing. She had left a man because she felt like leaving him. Had he persecuted her? Had he tried to take revenge on her? No. Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden, but the unbearable lightness of being.

I am not in favor of imposing happiness on people. Everyone has a right to his bad wine, to his stupidity, and to his dirty fingernails.

Necessity, weight, and value are three concepts inextricably bound: only necessity is heavy, and only what is heavy has value.

To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it.

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

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

Why don't you ever use your strength on me?" she said. Because love means renouncing strength," said Franz softly.