Quote

The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented.

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
Novel
Border
Character
Novels
Prose
Possibilities
Equally
Circumvented
Borders
Horrified
Characters
Crossed
Possibility
Fond

More quotes by Milan Kundera

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Any new possibility that existence acquires, even the least likely, transforms everything about existence.
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On the surface, an intelligible lie underneath, the unintelligible truth.
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Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is not forbidden by law in their case animals have the right to a merciful death.
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Sad company is bad company.
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Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another.
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A man able to think isn't defeated - even when he is defeated.
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The source of anxiety lies in the future. If you can keep the future out of mind, you can forget your worries.
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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.
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The love between dog and man is idyllic, dogs were never expelled from paradise.
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But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.
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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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For he was aware of the great secret of life: Women don't look for handsome men. Women look for men who have had beautiful women. Having an ugly mistress is therefore a fatal mistake.
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Memory does not make films, it makes photographs.
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When we ignore the body, we are more easily victimized by it.
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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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Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.
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Isn't beer the holy libation of sincerity? The potion that dispels all hypocrisy, any charade of fine manners? The drink that does nothing worse than incite its fans to urinate in all innocence, to gain weight in all frankness?
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Yes, it's crazy. Love is either crazy or it's nothing at all.
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In the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.
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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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