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Joking is a barrier between man and the world. Joking is the enemy of love and poetry.

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
Poetry
Enemy
Men
Love
Laughable
World
Joking
Barrier
Barriers

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The moment Kafka attracts more attenetion than Joseph K., Kafka's posthumous death begins.
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She is sadder and sadder, and for a man there is no balm more soothing than the sadness he has caused a woman.
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There is no perfection only life
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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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Love is a continual interrogation. I don’t know of a better definition of love.
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But which was the real me? Let me be perfectly honest: I was a man of many faces. (p.33)
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Until that time, her betrayals had filled her with excitement and joy, because they opened up new paths to new adventures of betrayal. But what if the paths came to an end? One could betray one's parents, husband, country, love, but when parents, husband, country, and love were gone - what was left to betray?
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He was no longer quite sure whether anything he had ever thought or felt was truly his own property, or whether his thoughts were merely a common part of the world’s store of ideas which had always existed ready-made and which people only borrowed, like books from a library.
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Yes, if you're looking for infinity, just close your eyes!
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Fidelity gives a unity to lives that would otherwise splinter into thousands of split-second impressions.
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The Greek word for return is nostos. Algos means suffering. So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.
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Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short.
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Common European thought is the fruit of the immense toil of translators. Without translators, Europe would not exist translators are more important than members of the European Parliament.
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Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo.
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Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.
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But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.
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The purpose of the poetry is not to dazzle us with an astonishing thought, but to make one moment of existence unforgettable and worthy of unbearable nostalgia.
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Tell me, where in life is there a value that would make us consider suicide uncalled for on principle! Love? Or friendship? I guarantee that friendship is not a bit less fickle than love and it is impossible to build anything on it. Self-love? I wish it were possible.
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The love between dog and man is idyllic, dogs were never expelled from paradise.
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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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