kunderaisms

"We all need someone to look at us. we can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. the first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. the second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. they are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. they are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. this happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. people in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. one day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. and finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. they are the dreamers."
- the unbearable lightness of being

"Love is by definition an unmerited gift; being loved without meriting it is the very proof of real love. If a woman tells me: I love you because you're intelligent, because you're decent, because you buy me gifts, because you don't chase women, because you do the dishes, then I'm disappointed; such love seems a rather self-interested business. How much finer it is to hear: I'm crazy about you even though you're neither intelligent nor decent, even though you're a liar, an egotist, a bastard." - slowness

"The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything....The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. The totalitarian world, whether founded on Marx, Islam, or anything else, is a world of answers rather than questions. There, the novel has no place." - the book of laughter & forgetting

"I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. I feel, therefore I am is a truth much more universally valid, and it applies to everything that's alive. My self does not differ substantially from yours in terms of its thought. Many people, few ideas: we all think more or less the same, and we exchange, borrow, steal thoughts from one another. However, when someone steps on my foot, only I feel the pain. The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of egocentrism." - immortality

"I think a man and woman love each other all the more when they don't live together and when they know about each other only that they exist, and when they are grateful to each other for the fact that they exist and that they know they exist. And that alone is enough for their happiness. I thank you dear ____, I thank you for existing." - laughable loves

under the weather

I made the conscious decision of withdrawing from most planned social activities this weekend in order to get some R & R. Something about this week felt especially draining, and I found myself getting all stuffy and sniffly (this is, of course, right after I bragged to a bunch of people how I haven't gotten really sick since my pre-college years, even while living in close corridors with highly contagious roommates).

After hours of boondoggling, I came home before midnight every night and found myself greeted by a lonely apartment and a fat cat. Anyway, so I stayed up until 5am last night watching this Korean Film called "Changing Partners":



Koreans are pretty (often times uncomfortably) racy these days. Can we go back to the days of (feigned) innocence where a graze of the pinky finger was the most "skinship" we would see? I remember this movie came out when I was in Korea, back in 2007. I actually really wanted to see it at the time, and somehow I ended up watching it 4 years later. Though the plot had some holes and the ending was kind of underwhelming, it was incredibly engaging and well-cast in my opinion. Though I have to say, it made married life seem so depressing, especially knowing that the adultery rate is incredibly high in Korea. Did you know there's an adultery law in Korea too (though I can't be too sure if it still exists now). I read somewhere that if a spouse finds the other spouse cheating, he/she can take the cheating spouse to court and even jail for civil damages. Though I'm definitely not a fan of adultery (for obvious reasons), it's strange to imagine that there would be an actual law against it. Imagine if they enacted the law in the U.S... who the heck would run the government and show business? - They'd all be behind bars.