The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“For there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”

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"Even then, her words had left Tomas in a strange state of melancholy, and now he realized it was only a matter of chance that Tereza loved him and not his friend Z. Apart from her consummated love for Tomas, there were, in the realm of possibility, an infinite number of unconsummated loves for other men.
We all reject out of hand the idea that the love of our life may be something light or weightless; we presume our love is what must be, that without it our life would no longer be the same; we feel that Beethoven himself, gloomy and awe-inspiring, is playing the Es muss sein! to our own great love.
Tomas often thought of Tereza's remark about his friend Z. and came to the conclusion that the love story of his life exemplified not Es muss sein (It must be so), but rather Es konnte auch anders sein (It could just as well be otherwise)."

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Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Readings In Social Psychology

"Doubts inevitably creep up about our effectiveness, about our approach, about the positions we assume or the actions we take.. But alongside the doubts, the uncertainty, and often the lack of visible results; we move forward..."
Andrea Ayvazian

The Sunset Limited

- How long 'd you felt like this..?
= All my life.
- Is that true?
= It's worse than that..
- .. I don't see what could be worse than that..
= Rage.. is really only for the good days.. The truth is there's little of that left..
The truth is that the forms I see have been slowly emptied out.. They no longer have any content.. They are shapes only.
A train.. a wall.. a world.. a man..
A thing, dangling in senseless articulation in a howling void -no meaning to its life..
It's words.. Why would I seek out the company of such a thing..?

The Sunset Limited

Laughing Gas

"There's the heartache of the exile, sir. There's the yearning to be away from it all. There's the dull despair of living in the shallow, glittering life of this tinsel town, where tragedy lies hid behind a thousand false smiles."
Laughing Gas - P. G. Wodehouse

Berserk

"But.. my light isn't to be seen among them. Still.. after all this time.. it seems I'm just someone who stopped to warm himself at the bonfire in passing.

So long as I have my sword to fight with, I'm sure to survive. Year after year, I've proven it to be true... I've always survived, no matter the odds, no matter how hopeless a losing battle [may seem]. This time was no different.. In truth, I don't believe that's any way to live one's life.

I've been fighting in battles for as long as I can remember. The mercenary leader who raised me taught me nothing, except how to wield a sword. I've never had anything, except my sword.

I don't want to die.. for me that is the only reason I keep fighting. There is nothing to save myself for nor give myself to; I fight because I know nothing else. Once I was willing, to do just that, to commit myself to fighting, and let anyone else find a reason for me.."

[Berserk - Guts Monologue]