Muntaser Ibrahim

“خصوصية المأساة عند جيل خاض تجربة التمرد ، هى أنه مهما كان مصير كل واحد من أبنائه ، سواء سار فى سكة السلامة ، طريق التوبة و الإذعان لقوة الأمر الواقع ، و حتى إعلان الكفر بكل قيم التمرد القديم ، أو سار فى طريق الندامة ، الإنهيار ، إعتزال الحياة ، المرض النفسى ، فإنه شاء أم أبى لا يعود أبداً نفس الشخص الذى قبل أن تبتليه غواية التمرد ، لقد مسه الحلم مرة ، و ستبقى تلاحقه دوماً ذكرى الخطيئة الجميلة ، لحظة حرية ، خفة ، لا تكاد تحتمل لفرط جمالها ، تبقى مؤرقة كالضمير ، و ملهمة ككل لحظة مفعمة بالحياة ،و الفاعلية مؤلمة”
― أروى صالح

“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.”
― Milan Kundera, Immortality

“Physical love is unthinkable without violence.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Remembering our past, carrying it around with us always, may be the necessary requirement for maintaining, as they say, the wholeness of the self. To ensure that the self doesn’t shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends. They are our mirror; our memory; we ask nothing of them but that they polish the mirror from time to time so we can look at ourselves in it.”
― Milan Kundera, Identity