“He had entered Parmenides' magic field: he was enjoying the sweet lightness of being.”

Milan Kundera
Happiness Positive

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“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.”


“She knew, of course that she was being supremely unfair, that Franz was the best man she ever had- he was intelligent, he understood her paintings, he was handsome and good-but the more she thought about it, the more she longed to ravish his intelligence, defile his kindheartedness, and violate his powerless strength”


“he realized he had no idea whether it was hysteria or love”


“He had never wanted to know anything about the part of her intimate life that he had not shared with her. Why should he take an interest now, still less take offense at it? Anyhow, he asked himself, what is an intimate secret? Is that where we hide what's most mysterious, most singular, most original about a human being? Are her intimate secrets what make Chantal the unique being he loves? No. What people keep secret is the most common, the most ordinary, the most prevalent thing, the same thing that everybody has: the body and its needs, its maladies, its manias-constipation for instance, or menstruation. We ashamedly conceal these intimate matters not because they are so personal but on the contrary, they are so lamentably impersonal.”


“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.”


“There is no perfection only lifeMilan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being”