Quote

A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.

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
Leave
Lives
Place
Persons
Person
Longs
Lightness
Unbearable
Unhappy

More quotes by 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 How can anyone state categorically that a thought he once had is no longer valid?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
And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.
Milan Kundera
Image
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
Milan Kundera
Image
Only after a while did it occur to me (in spite of the chilly silence which surrounded me) that my story was not of the tragic sort, but rather of the comic variety. At any rate that afforded me some comfort.
Milan Kundera
Image
Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another.
Milan Kundera
Image
But if God is gone and man is no longer master, then who is master?
Milan Kundera
Image
Those boobs of yours are ubiquitous - like God!
Milan Kundera
Image
Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.
Milan Kundera
Image
The greater the ambiguity, the greater the pleasure.
Milan Kundera
Image
Fortunately women have the miraculous ability to change the meaning of their actions after the event.
Milan Kundera
Image
Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated.
Milan Kundera
Image
...[P]eople who shout joy from the rooftops are often the saddest of all... (p.24)
Milan Kundera
Image
...no one can do a thing about feelings, they exist and there's no way to censor them. We can reproach ourselves for some action, for a remark, but not for a feeling, quite simply because we have no control at all over it.
Milan Kundera
Image
The best actors do not let the wheels show.
Milan Kundera
Image
Memory does not make films, it makes photographs.
Milan Kundera
Image
Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something - love - from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.
Milan Kundera
Image
The beauty of New York is unintentional it arose independent of human design, like a stalagmite cavern.
Milan Kundera
Image
Which doesn't mean, of course, that I'd stopped loving her, that I'd forgotten her, or that her image had paled on the contrary in the form of a quiet nostalgia she remained constantly within me I longed for her as one longs for something definitively lost.
Milan Kundera
Image
The Greek word for return is nostos. Algos means suffering. So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.
Milan Kundera
Image
As you live out your desolation, you can be either unhappy or happy. Having that choice is what constitutes your freedom.
Milan Kundera