Sammy James

“A person is nothing but his image. Philosophers can tell us that it doesn't matter what the world thinks of us, that nothing matters but what we really are. But philosophers don't understand anything. As long as we live with other people, we are only what other people consider us to be. Thinking about how others see us and trying to make our image as attractive as possible is considered a kind of dissembling or cheating. But does there exist another kind of direct contact between my self and their selves except through the mediation of the eyes? Can we possibly imagine love without anxiously following our image in the mind of the beloved? When we are no longer interested in how we are seen by the person we love, it means we no longer love.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“What is unbearable in life is not being, but being one's self. To live, there is no happiness there. Living: carrying around the world one's painful self. But being, being is happiness. Being: to transform into a fountain, a stone basin in which the universe descends like a lukewarm rain - Postface by François Ricard, translated from French”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“Just imagine living in a world without mirrors. You'd dream about your face and imagine it as an outer reflection of what is inside you. And then, when you reached forty, someone put a mirror before you for the first time in your life. Imagine your fright! You'd see the face of a stranger. And you'd know quite clearly what you are unable to grasp: your face is not you.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“[...] to be absolutely modern means: never to question the content of modernity and to serve it as one serves the absolute, that is, without hesitation.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality