In Tereza's eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.

Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated.

Dreaming is not merely an act of communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself.

Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.

The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.

When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.

In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

Memory does not make films, it makes photographs.

My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.

But I don't think we shall quarrel about a word - the subject of our inquiry is too important for that.

Earth’s troubles fade in the light of heaven’s hope.

You don’t need to get anyone else to agree with your truth. You just need to live it.

Happiness is living by inner purpose, not by outer pressures. Happiness is having a sense of meaning, not a feeling of futility.

I had always been fascinated by the bizarre world of cards. It was a world of pure power politics where rewards and punishments were meted out immediately.

love is a hawk with velvet claws love is a rock with heart and veins love is a lion with satin jaws love is a storm with silken reins

There's people saying that 'Jackie Brown' was a blaxploitation movie, when there's nothing at all blaxploitation about it other than Pam Grier being in it.

Her life was monotonous, but it kept her out of trouble. . . . This, her father would say, was called being an adult.

Opposition is not necessarily enmity.