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it is wrong to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences... but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life a dimension of beauty.

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
Beauty
Dimension
Wrong
Coincidence
Right
Dimensions
Men
Fascinated
Life
Mysterious
Chide
Daily
Deprives
Blind
Coincidences
Novel
Thereby

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God has been kind to dogs in no putting a sense of beauty into their heads.
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The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.
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The border between good and evil is terribly fuzzy.
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This symmetrical composition--the same motif at the beginning and at the end--may seem quite novelistic to you, and I am willing to agree, but only on condition that you refrain from reading such notions as fictive, fabricated, and untrue to life into the word novelistic. Because human lives are composed in precisely such a fas
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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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And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?
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Sleep in my arms. Like a baby bird. Like a broom among brooms... in a broom closet. Like a tiny parrot. Like a whistle. Like a little song. A song sung by a forest... within a forest... a thousand years ago.
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But then he told himself: What does it really mean to be useful? Today's world, just as it is, contains the sum of the utility of all people of all times. Which implies: The highest morality consists in being useless.
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The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting.
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The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters.
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Tereza knew what happens during the moment love is born: the woman cannot resist the voice calling forth her terrified soul the man cannot resist the woman whose soul thus responds to his voice.
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On the surface, an intelligible lie underneath, the unintelligible truth.
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Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel it is its morality.
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Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity.
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She regarded books as the emblems of secret brotherhood. A man with this sort of library couldn't possibly hurt her.
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I am not worthy of my suffering. A great sentence. It suggests not only that suffering is the basis of the self, its sole indubitable ontological proof, but also that it is the one feeling most worthy of respect the value of all values.
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