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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
Must
Never
Collapse
Burden
Memory
Allow
Memories
Future

More quotes by Milan Kundera

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Yes, it's a well-known fact about you: you're like death, you take everything.
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Optimism is the opium of the people.
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what's the matter? he asked nothing what do you want me to do for you? i want you to be old. ten years older. twenty years older what she meant was: i want you to be weak. as weak as i am.
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And I ran after that voice through the streets so as not to lose sight of the splendid wreath of bodies gliding over the city, and I realized with anguish in my heart that they were flying like birds and I was falling like a stone, that they had wings and I would never have any.
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The history of music is mortal, but the idiocy of the guitar is eternal.
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I cannot hate them because nothing binds me to them I have nothing in common with them.
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How goodness heightens beauty!
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To laugh is to live profoundly.
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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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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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Happiness is the longing for repetition.
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You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.
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The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists' discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish.
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The young man called the waiter and paid. Then he got up and said to the girl: 'We're going.' Where to?' The girl feigned surprise. Don't ask, just come on,' said the young man. Is that any way to talk to me?' It's the way I talk to whores.
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A worker may be the hammer's master, but the hammer still prevails. A tool knows exactly how it is meant to be handled, while the user of the tool can only have an approximate idea.
Milan Kundera
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Yes, the essence of every love is a child, and it makes no difference at all whether it has ever actually been conceived or born. In the algebra of love a child is the symbol of the magical sum of two beings.
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Only animals were not expelled from Paradise.
Milan Kundera
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Fortunately women have the miraculous ability to change the meaning of their actions after the event.
Milan Kundera
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Only after a while did it occur to me (in spite of the chilly silence which surrounded me) that my story was not of the tragic sort, but rather of the comic variety. At any rate that afforded me some comfort.
Milan Kundera
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In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.
Milan Kundera