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The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone.

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
Choices
Humiliation
Everyone
Basis
Without
Bases
Matter
Shame
Feel
Choice
Must
Personal
Feels
Mistake
Seen
Ignominy

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Once her love had been publicized, it would gain weight, become a burden.
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Fidelity gives a unity to lives that would otherwise splinter into thousands of split-second impressions.
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How goodness heightens beauty!
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The history of music is mortal, but the idiocy of the guitar is eternal.
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We go through the present blindfolded... Only later, when the blindfold is removed and we examine the past, do we realize what we've been through and understand what it means.
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Yes, the essence of every love is a child, and it makes no difference at all whether it has ever actually been conceived or born. In the algebra of love a child is the symbol of the magical sum of two beings.
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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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La memoria no guarda películas, guarda fotografías.
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Through the air floated only important words, and Flajsman said to himself that love has but one true measure, and that is death. At the end of true love is death, and only the love that ends in death is love.
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Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity.
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The best actors do not let the wheels show.
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she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.
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The young man called the waiter and paid. Then he got up and said to the girl: 'We're going.' Where to?' The girl feigned surprise. Don't ask, just come on,' said the young man. Is that any way to talk to me?' It's the way I talk to whores.
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It was futile to attack with reason the stout wall of irrational feelings that, as is known, is the stuff of which the female mind is made.
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The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question.
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Art arises from sources other than logic. (p.32)
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To be a writer does not mean to preach a truth, it means to discover a truth.
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