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Ah, ladies and gentlemen, a man lives a sad life when he cannot take anything or anyone seriously.

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
Lives
Cannot
Anything
Take
Gentlemen
Men
Ladies
Life
Gentleman
Seriously
Anyone

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Radio... force-feeds us music... everywhere and all the time... sewage-water music in which music is dying.
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Is a novel anything but a trap set for a hero?
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Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.
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It takes so little, so infinitely little, for a person to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love, convictions, faith, history. Human life -- and herein lies its secret -- takes place in the immediate proximity of that border, even in direct contact with it it is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch.
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No one can get really drunk on a novel or a painting, but who can help getting drunk on Reethoven's Ninth, Rartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, or the Reatles' White Album?
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The novelist's ambition is not to do something better than his predecessors but to see what they did not see, say what they did not say.
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The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters.
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Pain doesn't listen to reason, it has it's own reason, which is not reasonable
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At the end of true love is death, and only the love that ends in death is love.
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The Greek word for return is nostos. Algos means suffering. So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.
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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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Tell me, where in life is there a value that would make us consider suicide uncalled for on principle! Love? Or friendship? I guarantee that friendship is not a bit less fickle than love and it is impossible to build anything on it. Self-love? I wish it were possible.
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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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Those boobs of yours are ubiquitous - like God!
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The purpose of the poetry is not to dazzle us with an astonishing thought, but to make one moment of existence unforgettable and worthy of unbearable nostalgia.
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The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question.
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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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Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry.
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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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Our dreams prove that to imagine - to dream about things that have not happened - is among mankind's deepest needs.
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