El hombre nunca sabe qué debe querer, porque vive sólo una vida y no tiene modo de compararla con sus vidas precedentes ni de enmendarla con sus vida… - Milan Kundera

We won't understand a thing about human life if we persist in avoiding the most obvious fact: that a reality no longer is what it was when it was; it cannot be reconstructed.

He had spent seven years of his life with Tereza, and now he realised that those years were more attractive in retrospect than they were when he was living them.

And Jakub realized that this child had done no harm, that he was not guilty of anything, and yet had been born with bad eyes and would have them forever. And he reflected further that what he had held against others was something given, something they came into the world with and carried with them like a heavy wire fence. He reflected that he had no privileged right to high-mindedness and that the highest degree of high-mindedness is to love people even though they are murderers.