Quote

The man hunched over his motorcycle can focus only on the present... he is caught in a fragment of time cut off from both the past and the future... he has no fear, because the source of fear is in the future, and a person freed of the future has nothing to fear.

Milan Kundera

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Milan Kundera
Age: 95
Born: 1929
Born: April 1
Author
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Screenwriter
Translator
University Teacher
Writer
Brünn
Men
Freedom
Freed
Time
Future
Motorcycle
Fear
Fragments
Inspirational
Caught
Past
Cutting
Persons
Source
Hunched
Person
Present
Slowness
Nothing
Focus
Fragment

More quotes by Milan Kundera

Image
She is sadder and sadder, and for a man there is no balm more soothing than the sadness he has caused a woman.
Milan Kundera
Image
In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.
Milan Kundera
Image
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 How can anyone state categorically that a thought he once had is no longer valid?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.
Milan Kundera
Image
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.
Milan Kundera
Image
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.
Milan Kundera
Image
The body was a cage, and inside that cage was something which looked, listened, feared, thought and marveled that something, that remainder left over after the body had been accounted for, was the soul.
Milan Kundera
Image
Isn't beer the holy libation of sincerity? The potion that dispels all hypocrisy, any charade of fine manners? The drink that does nothing worse than incite its fans to urinate in all innocence, to gain weight in all frankness?
Milan Kundera
Image
it is wrong to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences... but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life a dimension of beauty.
Milan Kundera
Image
The river flowed from century to century, and human affairs play themselves out on its banks. Play themselves out to be forgotten the next day, while the river flows on.
Milan Kundera
Image
And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?
Milan Kundera
Image
Yes, it's a well-known fact about you: you're like death, you take everything.
Milan Kundera
Image
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.
Milan Kundera
Image
The border between good and evil is terribly fuzzy.
Milan Kundera
Image
But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science , instantly fades away.
Milan Kundera
Image
I understood that there was no escaping the memories, that I was surround by them. (p.30)
Milan Kundera
Image
Cemeteries in Bohemia are like gardens. The graves are covered with grass and colourful flowers. Modest tombstones are lost in the greenery. When the sun goes down, the cemetery sparkles with tiny candles... no matter how brutal life becomes, peace always reigns in the cemetery. Even in wartime, even in Hitler's time, even in Stalin's time.
Milan Kundera
Image
The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.
Milan Kundera
Image
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
Image
A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.
Milan Kundera
Image
Unlike the puerile loyalty to a conviction, loyalty to a friend is a virtue - perhaps the only virtue, the last remaining one.
Milan Kundera