ما أن يكون هناك شاهد علي أعمالنا حتي نتأقلم طوعا أو كرها مع النواظر التي تراقبنا, فلا يعود أي شئ مما نقوم به حقيقيا. أن نحظي بجمهور أو أن نفكر بجمهور… - Milan Kundera

Because I'm happy that you exist at all, Elisabeth. Perhaps I love you. Perhaps I love you very much. But probably just for this reason it would be better if we remain as we are. I think a man and a woman love each other all the more when they don't live together and when they know about each other only that they exist, and when they are grateful to each other for the fact that they exist and that they know they exist. And that alone is enough for their happiness.

When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novel teaches us to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude.

This reconciliation with Hitler reveals the profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return, for in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted.