Perhaps I love you. Perhaps I love you very much. But probably just for this reason it would be better if we remain as we are. I think a man and a wo… - Milan Kundera

We don't know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don't understand our name at all, we don't know its history, and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration. A face is like a name. It must have happened some time toward the end of my childhood: I kept looking in the mirror for such a long time that I finally believed that what I was seeing was my self. My recollection of this period is very vague, but I know that the discovery of the self must have been intoxicating. Yet there comes a time when you stand in front of a mirror and ask yourself: this is my self? And why? Why did I want to identify with this? What do I care about this face? And at that moment everything starts to crumble. Everything starts to crumble.

لو لم أر صورتي في المرآة, و طُلب منّي وصف هيئتي الخارجية انطلاقاً من معرفتي بنفسي, لرسمت صورة لا صلة لها بصورتي التي تُرى! فأنا لست مطلقاً ما أبدو عليه

All novels . . . are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are automatically confronted by the question: what is the self? How can it be grasped?