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Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!

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
Causes
Quick
Nice
Grass
Running
Flow
Two
Moved
Kitsch
Together
Tears
Lightness
Firsts
Mankind
Succession
First
Second
Unbearable
Children
Says
Tear

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...[P]eople who shout joy from the rooftops are often the saddest of all... (p.24)
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The sound of laughter is like the vaulted dome of a temple of happiness.
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loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.
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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 body was a cage, and inside that cage was something which looked, listened, feared, thought and marveled that something, that remainder left over after the body had been accounted for, was the soul.
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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.
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He took over anger to intimidate subordinates, and in time anger took over him.
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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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Eroticism is like a dance: one always leads the other.
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Einmal ist keinmal, says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.
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