Quote

Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood.

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
Persons
Childhood
Person
Walking
Without
High
Tightrope
Country
Friends
Afforded
Mean
Known
Colleagues
Family
Foreign
Language
Easily
Means
Ground

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Once her love had been publicized, it would gain weight, become a burden.
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In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.
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The senator had only one argument in his favour: his feeling. When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme.
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He took over anger to intimidate subordinates, and in time anger took over him.
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Sad company is bad company.
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The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order.
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a man possessed with peace is always smiling
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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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The beauty of New York is unintentional it arose independent of human design, like a stalagmite cavern.
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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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Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.
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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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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.
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The river flowed from century to century, and human affairs play themselves out on its banks. Play themselves out to be forgotten the next day, while the river flows on.
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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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Perhaps if they had stayed together longer, Sabina and Franz would have begun to understand the words they used. Gradually, timorously, their vocabularies would have come together, like bashful lovers, and the music of one would have begun to intersect with the music of the other. But it was too late now.
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Cemeteries in Bohemia are like gardens. The graves are covered with grass and colourful flowers. Modest tombstones are lost in the greenery. When the sun goes down, the cemetery sparkles with tiny candles... no matter how brutal life becomes, peace always reigns in the cemetery. Even in wartime, even in Hitler's time, even in Stalin's time.
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A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.
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Yes, if you're looking for infinity, just close your eyes!
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Facts mean little compared to attitudes. To contradict rumor or sentiment is as futile as arguing against a believer's faith in the Immaculate Conception. You have simply become a victim of faith, Comrade Assistant.
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