A Lot Of The Ways Of Advertising

After You Publish A Book, You Become A Writer And You're Supposed To Take It Very Seriously. You're Supposed To Show Up At Your Desk - Although Frankly, I Don't Have A Desk, I Write In Bed - You're Supposed To Show Up At Your Bed And Produce Work. I Think It's A Little Bit Like Work. I Like To Have Fun With It, Do Things Like Make Silly Book Trailers. I Don't Want To Take This Too Seriously.

A Writer Or Any Suffering Artist-to-be Is Just An Instrument Too Finely Set To The Human Condition [...]

I Love Librarians More Than Any Other People In The World. When I Was An Immigrant Kid, They’ve Made Me Feel Like A Human Being And They Gave Me Books That Taught Me English.

My Parents Were Constantly Afraid They Would Lose Their Jobs. The Idea That We Were Always A Paycheck Away From Disaster Was Drilled Into Me.

In The First Few Pages, Kundera Discusses Several Abstract Historical Figures: Robespierre, Nietzsche, Hitler. For Eunice's Sake, I Wanted Him To Get To The Plot, To Introduce Actual "living" Characters - I Recalled This Was A Love Story - And To Leave The World Of Ideas Behind. Here We Were, Two People Lying In Bed, Eunice's Worried Head Propped On My Collarbone, And I Wanted Us To Feel Something In Common. I Wanted This Complex Language, This Surge Of Intellect, To Be Processed Into Love. Isn't That How They Used To Do It A Century Ago, People Reading Poetry To One Another?