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She regarded books as the emblems of secret brotherhood. A man with this sort of library couldn't possibly hurt her.
Milan Kundera
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Milan Kundera
Age: 95
Born: 1929
Born: April 1
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More quotes by Milan Kundera
People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.
Milan Kundera
Living, there is no happiness in that. Living: carrying one’s painful self through the world. But being, being is happiness. Being: Becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain.
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What is unique about the I hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The individual I is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered.
Milan Kundera
Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.
Milan Kundera
Mankind's real moral test, a test so radical and so deep that it escapes our gaze, is probably the one of its relations with those that are the most at its mercy the Animals.
Milan Kundera
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.
Milan Kundera
All lovers unconsciously establish their own rules of the game, which from the outset admit of no transgression.
Milan Kundera
...he took a look at the blond girl's eyes and knew that he must not take part in the rigged game in which the ephemeral passes for the eternal and the small for the big, that he must not take part in the rigged game called love.
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loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.
Milan Kundera
Art arises from sources other than logic. (p.32)
Milan Kundera
Is a novel anything but a trap set for a hero?
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?
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Sometimes you make up your mind about something without knowing why, and your decision persists by the power of inertia. Every year it gets harder to change.
Milan Kundera
I am not worthy of my suffering. A great sentence. It suggests not only that suffering is the basis of the self, its sole indubitable ontological proof, but also that it is the one feeling most worthy of respect the value of all values.
Milan Kundera
He took over anger to intimidate subordinates, and in time anger took over him.
Milan Kundera
The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone.
Milan Kundera
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.
Milan Kundera
I think I am a much better actor than I have allowed myself to be.
Milan Kundera
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.
Milan Kundera
Only animals were not expelled from Paradise.
Milan Kundera
