In Irena’s head the alcohol plays a double role: it frees her fantasy, encourages her boldness, makes her sensual, and at the same time it dims her m… - Milan Kundera

He looks at houses, chateaus, forests, and thinks about the countless generations who used to see those things and who are gone now; and he understands that everything he is seeing is oblivion; pure oblivion, the oblivion whose absolute state will soon be achieved, the moment he himself is gone. And again I think about the obvious idea (that astoundingly obvious idea) that everything that exists (nation, thought, music) can also not exist.

حين يحاول رجل لامع إغواء امرأة، يتولد لديها انطباع أنها تدخل في منافسة، وتضطر هي أيضًا للتألق، ولا تمنح نفسها دون مقاومة. بينما التفاهة تحررها، تجردها من حذرها. لا تتطلب أي حضور للنباهة، تجعلها لا مبالية ومن ثم سهلة المنال

Perhaps if they had stayed together longer, Sabina and Franz would have begun to understand the words they used. Gradually, timorously, their vocabularies would have come together, like bashful lovers, and the music of one would have begun to intersect with the music of the other. But it was too late now.