Quote

In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

Milan Kundera

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Milan Kundera
Age: 95
Born: 1929
Born: April 1
Author
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Brünn
Auras
Lightness
Dissolution
Unbearable
Nostalgia
Sunset
Guillotine
Everything
Illuminated
Even
Aura

More quotes by Milan Kundera

Image
what's the matter? he asked nothing what do you want me to do for you? i want you to be old. ten years older. twenty years older what she meant was: i want you to be weak. as weak as i am.
Milan Kundera
Image
He suddenly recalled from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split then in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.
Milan Kundera
Image
I have a strong will to love you for eternity.
Milan Kundera
Image
loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.
Milan Kundera
Image
On the surface, an intelligible lie underneath, the unintelligible truth.
Milan Kundera
Image
The moment Kafka attracts more attenetion than Joseph K., Kafka's posthumous death begins.
Milan Kundera
Image
Our dreams prove that to imagine - to dream about things that have not happened - is among mankind's deepest needs.
Milan Kundera
Image
But man, because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to follow his passion (compassion) or not.
Milan Kundera
Image
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.
Milan Kundera
Image
Between the approximation of the idea and the precision of reality there was a small gap of the unimaginable, and it was this hiatus that gave him no rest.
Milan Kundera
Image
Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.
Milan Kundera
Image
The pressure to make public retractions of past statements - there's something medieval about it. What does it mean, anyway, to 'retract' what you've said? How can anyone state categorically that a thought he once had is no longer valid? In modern times an idea can be refuted, yes, but not retracted.
Milan Kundera
Image
Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry.
Milan Kundera
Image
In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.
Milan Kundera
Image
But if God is gone and man is no longer master, then who is master?
Milan Kundera
Image
And I ran after that voice through the streets so as not to lose sight of the splendid wreath of bodies gliding over the city, and I realized with anguish in my heart that they were flying like birds and I was falling like a stone, that they had wings and I would never have any.
Milan Kundera
Image
Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is not forbidden by law in their case animals have the right to a merciful death.
Milan Kundera
Image
In her presence I could dare everything: sincerity, emotion, pathos.
Milan Kundera
Image
A man who loses his privacy loses everything. And a man who gives it up of his own free will is a monster.
Milan Kundera
Image
Kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.
Milan Kundera