What we have not chosen we cannot consider either our merit or our failure... To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take… - Milan Kundera

To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it.

What we have not chosen we cannot consider either to our merit or our failure.

Such are the Splendors and Miseries of memory: it is proud of its ability to keep truthful track of the logical sequence of past events; but when it comes to how we experienced them at the time, memory feels no obligation to truth.

There is no perfection only life..

Tamina feels that the eyes of a single outsider are enough to destroy the worth of her personal diaries, while Goethe thinks that if a single individual fails to set eyes on his lines, that individual calls his–Goethe’s–entire existence into question. The difference between Tamina and Goethe is the difference between human being and writer.