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Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.

Milan Kundera

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Milan Kundera
Age: 95
Born: 1929
Born: April 1
Author
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Brünn
Love
Dangerous
Metaphors
Word
Enters
Point
Unbearable
Woman
Poetic
Language
Metaphor
Dream
Begins
Metaphoric
Firsts
Memory
Metaphorical
First
Memories
Lightness

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Sensuality is the total mobilization of the senses: an individual observes his partner intently, straining to catch every sound.
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God has been kind to dogs in no putting a sense of beauty into their heads.
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When we ignore the body, we are more easily victimized by it.
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Even in the game there lurks a lack of freedom even in a game is a trap for the players.
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The important thing is to abide by the rule of threes. Either you see a woman three times in quick succession and then never again, or you maintain relations over the years but make sure that the rendezvous are at least three weeks apart.
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Only a literary work that reveals an unknown fragment of human existence has a reason for being.
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The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us.
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We don't know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don't understand our name at all, we don't know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.
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I am not in favor of imposing happiness on people. Everyone has a right to his bad wine, to his stupidity, and to his dirty fingernails.
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Now time has a very different look it is no longer the conquering present capturing the future it is the present conquered and captured and carried off by the past.
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Jealousy has the amazing power to illuminate a single person in an intense beam of light, keeping the multitude of others in total darkness.
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La memoria no guarda películas, guarda fotografías.
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He took over anger to intimidate subordinates, and in time anger took over him.
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The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters.
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But which was the real me? Let me be perfectly honest: I was a man of many faces. (p.33)
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But man, because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to follow his passion (compassion) or not.
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...[P]eople who shout joy from the rooftops are often the saddest of all... (p.24)
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No one can get really drunk on a novel or a painting, but who can help getting drunk on Reethoven's Ninth, Rartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, or the Reatles' White Album?
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Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry.
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I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn't know who I was or wanted to be.
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