The Unbearable Lightness of Being: I Think I'm in Love

I have a habit of ignoring the suggestions of men that I am dating when it comes to literature.  Despite the fact that The Unbearable Lightness of Being lived in my house for six years, I never considered it until I found it this afternoon on a table of "Staff All Time Favorites" in Barnes and Noble.  I have not been so consumed by something since Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself.

I am sure there will be NUMEROUS posts on this--but for the time being, here are a few snippets to encourage those that love the book to revisit it and to introduce those that have not yet read it to their next great love.

p. 31

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.

p. 59

The dreams were eloquent, but they were also beautiful.  That aspect seems to have escaped Freud in his theory of dreams.  Dreaming is not merely an act of communication (or coded communication, if you like); it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself.  Our dreams prove that to imagine--to dream about things that have not happened--is among mankind's deepest needs.  Herein lies the danger.  If dreams were not beautiful, they would be quickly forgotten. But Tereza kept coming back to her dreams, running through them in her mind, turning them into legends.  Tomas lived under the hypnotic spell cast by the excruciating beauty of Tereza's dreams.

p. 59-60

Anyone whose goal is "something higher" must expect some day to suffer vertigo.  What is vertigo?  Fear of falling?  Then why do we feel it when the observation tower comes equipped with a sturdy handrail? No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling.  It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts an lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.

Masterful....ok.  I am going back to reading.  Might I suggest the album "Universe" by Sarah Slean to accompany the reading of these first 100 pages :)