To Get Lost

"The alleyways and courtyards of the city still embody the disorienting quality of Kafka's work [Unbearable Lightness of Being]. As cold night descends, the twisting little lanes seem to mock the city plan clutched in a traveler's numbing fingers. Prague defies maps. Prague is a place to get lost."

--"Footsteps: Milan Kundera's Prague - Trumping the Unbearable Darkness of History" by Nicholas Kulish, from the New York Times

The Betrayed World

"Beauty is the world betrayed."
--Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being



Sonargon was the first capital of Bangladesh. My cousin told me about these old, Hindi houses out there that are abandoned now, and the government can't afford to preserve them, so there they stand. Of course, people live in many of those buildings because, hey, it's shelter.

Living Life Once

"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."
—Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being