Quotes: Milan Kundera

"Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us. We read its messages much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of a cup." 

–– Milan Kundera (1929-2023), Czech-born French writer 

Source: Milan Kundera. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Translation by Michael Henry Heim. New York: HarperCollins, 1984; p. 48-49. 

via: Commonplace Book, 2013-2014, 2014, p. 92.

Quotes: Lidia Yuknavitch

"If we tell our children anything, it must be that fitting in is not what's important. It's what's easy. It's what's expected and so the opposite is frowned upon. We should tell them that it hurts not to belong and, as hard as it might be to hear, that hurt may not go away. It may grow and settle into a different, deeper kind of hurt, a pain that seeps and spreads and becomes a part of them. It's not sadness, exactly. Misfits can, and often are, happy, joyful, blissful people. ... There is power in difference. There is beauty." 

–– Lidia Yuknavitch (b. 1963), American writer 

Source: Lidia Yuknavitch. The Misfit's Manifesto. New York: TED Books (Simon & Schuster), 2017; p. 53-4.

via: Commonplace Book 2022, 2023, p. 75.