Rejection and privilege, happiness and woe — no one felt more concretely than Yakov how interchangeable opposites are, how short the step from one po… - Milan Kundera

There are things that can be accomplished only by violence. Physical love is unthinkable without violence.

A long time ago, man would listen in amazement to the sound of regular beats in
his chest, never suspecting what they were. He was unable to identify himself
with so alien and unfamiliar an object as the body. The body was a cage, and
inside that cage was something which looked, listened, feared, thought, and
marveled; that something, that remainder left over after the body had been
accounted for, was the soul.

Youth is a terrible thing: it is a stage trod by children in buskins and fancy costumes mouthing speeches they've memorized and fanatically believe but only half understand