أما العيش في الحقيقة وعدم الكذب على أنفسنا وعلى الآخرين، فأمر غير ممكن، إلا إذا عشنا بعيداً عن الناس. فما أن يكون هناك شاهد على أعمالنا حتى نتأقلم طوع… - Milan Kundera

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 فهذا يعني أن نعيش في الكذب.

Tomas turned the key and switched on the ceiling light. Teraza saw two beds pushed together, one of them flanked by a bedside table and a lamp. Up out of the lampshade, startled by the overhead light, flew a large nocturnal butterfly that began circling the room. The strains of the piano and violin rose up weakly from below.

By revealing to Tomas her dream about jabbing needles under her fingernails, Tereza unwittingly revealed that she had gone through his desk. If Tereza had been any other woman, Tomas would never have spoken to her again. Aware of that, Tereza said to him, Throw me out! But instead of throwing her out, he seized her hand and kissed the tips of her fingers, because at that moment he himself felt the pain under her fingernails as surely as if the nerves of her fingers led straight to his own brain.

Anyone who has failed to benefit from the Devil’s gift of compassion (co-feeling) will condemn Tereza coldly for her deed, because privacy is sacred and drawers containing intimate correspondence are not to be opened. But because compassion was Tomas’s fate (or curse), he felt that he himself had knelt before the open desk drawer, unable to tear his eyes from Sabina’s letter. He understood Tereza, and not only was he incapable of being angry with her, he loved her all the more.

(existential mathematics...) the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting.” –p. 39