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The novelist's ambition is not to do something better than his predecessors but to see what they did not see, say what they did not say.

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
Writing
Something
Predecessors
Novelist
Novelists
Ambition
Creative
Better

More quotes by Milan Kundera

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But man, because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to follow his passion (compassion) or not.
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For the body is temporal and thought is eternal and the shimmering essence of flame is an image of thought.
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The pressure to make public retractions of past statements - there's something medieval about it. What does it mean, anyway, to 'retract' what you've said? How can anyone state categorically that a thought he once had is no longer valid? In modern times an idea can be refuted, yes, but not retracted.
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Those boobs of yours are ubiquitous - like God!
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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.
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...in our time art is encrusted with a noisy, opaque, logorrhea of theory that prevents a work from coming into direct, media free, non-interpreted contact with its viewer (its reader, its listener)
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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.
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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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I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn't know who I was or wanted to be.
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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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I think, therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.
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Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.
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In her presence I could dare everything: sincerity, emotion, pathos.
Milan Kundera
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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 characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented.
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Even in the game there lurks a lack of freedom even in a game is a trap for the players.
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Pain doesn't listen to reason, it has it's own reason, which is not reasonable
Milan Kundera
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The senator had only one argument in his favour: his feeling. When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme.
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And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?
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Jealousy has the amazing power to illuminate a single person in an intense beam of light, keeping the multitude of others in total darkness.
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