We can reproach ourselves for some action, for a remark, but not for a feeling, quite simply because we have no control at all over it. - Milan Kundera

Horror is a shock, a time of utter blindness. Horror lacks every hint of beauty. All we can see is the piercing light of an unknown event awaiting us. Sadness, on the other hand, assumes we are in the know... The light of horror thus lost its harshness, and the world was bathed in a gentle, bluish light that actually beautified it.

Look around you. Of all the people you see, no one is here by his own wish. Of course, what I just said is the most banal truth there is. So banal, and so basic, that we’ve stopped seeing it and hearing it.

In Tereza's eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood.
For she had but a single weapon against the world of crudity surrounding her:
the books she took out of the municipal library, and above all, the novels.