People derived too much pleasure from seeing their fellow man morally humiliated to spoil that pleasure by hearing out an explanation. - Milan Kundera

The reign of imagology begins where history ends

Remembering our past, carrying it around with us always, may be the necessary requirement for maintaining, as they say, the wholeness of the self. To ensure that the self doesn’t shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends. They are our mirror; our memory; we ask nothing of them but that they polish the mirror from time to time so we can look at ourselves in it.

Loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they too, fade away.