The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The heaviest of burdens is also an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.

The only relationship that can make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place and neither partner makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other.

Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent.

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

Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo.

We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.