The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists' discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish.

She had come to him to escape her mother's world, a world where all bodies were equal. She had come to him to make her body unique, irreplaceble. But he, too had drawn an equal sign between her and the rest of them: he kissed them all alike, stroked them all alike, made no, absolutely no distiction between Tereza's body and the other bodies. He sent her back to the world she tried to escape, sent to march naked with the other naked women

Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.

she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.

I think, therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.

The ludicrous element in our feeling does not make them any less authentic.

Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo.