Quote

As you live out your desolation, you can be either unhappy or happy. Having that choice is what constitutes your freedom.

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
Freedom
Live
Desolation
Constitutes
Unhappy
Choice
Either
Choices
Happy

More quotes by Milan Kundera

Image
Is a novel anything but a trap set for a hero?
Milan Kundera
Image
Eroticism is like a dance: one always leads the other.
Milan Kundera
Image
...no one can do a thing about feelings, they exist and there's no way to censor them. We can reproach ourselves for some action, for a remark, but not for a feeling, quite simply because we have no control at all over it.
Milan Kundera
Image
For the body is temporal and thought is eternal and the shimmering essence of flame is an image of thought.
Milan Kundera
Image
In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.
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
...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.
Milan Kundera
Image
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.
Milan Kundera
Image
loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.
Milan Kundera
Image
The beauty of New York is unintentional it arose independent of human design, like a stalagmite cavern.
Milan Kundera
Image
Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.
Milan Kundera
Image
Pain doesn't listen to reason, it has it's own reason, which is not reasonable
Milan Kundera
Image
Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.
Milan Kundera
Image
Immortality no longer interests the weary old man at all.
Milan Kundera
Image
The ludicrous element in our feeling does not make them any less authentic.
Milan Kundera
Image
...people don't respect the morning. An alarm clock violently wakes them up, shatters their sleep like the blow of an ax, and they immediately surrender themselves to deadly haste.
Milan Kundera
Image
For existential mathematics, which does not exist, would probably propose this equation: the value of coincidence equals the degree of its improbability.
Milan Kundera
Image
The sound of laughter is like the vaulted dome of a temple of happiness.
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
Image
The greater the ambiguity, the greater the pleasure.
Milan Kundera