ما هرگز نمی توانیم با قاطعیت بگوییم که روابط ما با دیگران تا چه حدی از احساسات ما، از عشق ما، از فقدان عشق ما، از لطف و مهربانی ما، و یا از کینه و نف… - Milan Kundera

She was experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant: We are at the last station. The happiness meant: We are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness.

Who was the real me? I can only repeat: I was a man of many faces.

At meetings I was earnest, enthusiastic, and committed; among friends, unconstrained and given to teasing; with Marketa, cynical and fitfully witty; and alone (and thinking of Marketa), unsure of myself and as agitated as a schoolboy.

Was the last face the real one?

No. They were all real: I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn’t know who I was or wanted to be. (I was frightened by the differences between one face and the next; none of them seemed to fit me properly, and I groped my way clumsily among them.)

Extremes means borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death.