Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters.
Milan Kundera
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Milan Kundera
Age: 95
Born: 1929
Born: April 1
Author
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Brünn
Medium
Mediums
Characters
Meditation
Novel
Seen
Existence
Character
Imaginary
More quotes by Milan Kundera
To die to decide to die that's much easier for an adolescent than for an adult. What? Doesn't death strip an adolescent of a far larger portion of future? Certainly it does, but for a young person, the future is a remote, abstract, unreal thing he doesn't really believe in.
Milan Kundera
Only the basic situations in life occur only once, never to return. For a man to be a man, he must be fully aware of this never-to-return. (p.148)
Milan Kundera
We don't know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don't understand our name at all, we don't know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.
Milan Kundera
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
Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel it is its morality.
Milan Kundera
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.
Milan Kundera
She knew that there were all kinds of ways to make a conquest and that one of the surest roads to a woman's genitals was through her sadness.
Milan Kundera
Leroy interrupted Chantal's fantasies: Freedom? As you live our your desolation, you can be either unhappy or happy. Having that choice is what constitutes your freedom. You're free to melt your own individuality into the cauldron of the multitude either with a feeling of defeat or euphoria.
Milan Kundera
Kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.
Milan Kundera
Our dreams prove that to imagine - to dream about things that have not happened - is among mankind's deepest needs.
Milan Kundera
Why don't you ever use your strength on me? she said. Because love means renouncing strength, said Franz softly.
Milan Kundera
The history of music is mortal, but the idiocy of the guitar is eternal.
Milan Kundera
The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting.
Milan Kundera
People are going deaf because music is played louder and louder, but because they're going deaf, it has to be played louder still.
Milan Kundera
When graves are covered with stones, the dead can no longer get out. But the dead can't go out anyway! What difference does it make whether they're covered with soil or stones?
Milan Kundera
Is a novel anything but a trap set for a hero?
Milan Kundera
Between the approximation of the idea and the precision of reality there was a small gap of the unimaginable, and it was this hiatus that gave him no rest.
Milan Kundera
The source of anxiety lies in the future. If you can keep the future out of mind, you can forget your worries.
Milan Kundera
The worth of a human being lies in the ability to extend oneself, to go outside oneself, to exist in and for other people.
Milan Kundera
God has been kind to dogs in no putting a sense of beauty into their heads.
Milan Kundera
