The other aspect of those weekday-evening trips he loved was the light itself, how it filled the train like something living as the cars rattled across the bridge, how it washed the weariness from his seat-mates’ faces and revealed them as
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“The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously 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. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women. Don't let me go, hold me tight, make me your plaything, your slave, be strong! But they were words she could not say.
The only thing she said when he released her from his embrace was, "You don't know how happy I am to be with you." That was the most her reserved nature allowed her to express.”
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The only thing she said when he released her from his embrace was, "You don't know how happy I am to be with you." That was the most her reserved nature allowed her to express.”
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, "sketch" is not quite a word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.”
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“He suddenly recalled from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split then in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.”
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.”
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
― The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Cass’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Cass’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
Favorite Genres
Art, Classics, Contemporary, Fantasy, Fiction, Memoir, Philosophy, Psychology, Romance, and Young-adult
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