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[W]e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory.

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
Memories
Future
Must
Never
Collapse
Burden
Memory
Allow

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All lovers unconsciously establish their own rules of the game, which from the outset admit of no transgression.
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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.
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Looking out over the courtyard at the dirty walls, he realized he had no idea whether it was hysteria or love.
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The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.
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she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.
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Immortality no longer interests the weary old man at all.
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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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The beauty of New York is unintentional it arose independent of human design, like a stalagmite cavern.
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Eroticism is like a dance: one always leads the other.
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We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our emotions - love, antipathy, charity, or malice - and what part is predetermined by the constant power play among individuals.
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Only animals were not expelled from Paradise.
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Noise has one advantage. It drowns out words.
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The moment Kafka attracts more attenetion than Joseph K., Kafka's posthumous death begins.
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Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.
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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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Fortunately women have the miraculous ability to change the meaning of their actions after the event.
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The important thing is to abide by the rule of threes. Either you see a woman three times in quick succession and then never again, or you maintain relations over the years but make sure that the rendezvous are at least three weeks apart.
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But if God is gone and man is no longer master, then who is master?
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The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.
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The great European novel started out as entertainment, and every true novelist is nostalgic for it. In fact, the themes of those great entertainments are terribly serious-think of Cervantes!
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