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The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history.

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
First
Step
People
Steps
Memories
Books
History
Culture
Erase
Firsts
Destroy
Book
Memory

More quotes by Milan Kundera

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We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under . . . The fourth category, the rarest, is the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers.
Milan Kundera
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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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If I had two lives, in one life I could invite her to stay at my place, and in the second life I could kick her out. Then I could compare and see which had been the best thing to do. But we only live once. Life's so light. Like an outline we can't ever fill in or correct... make any better. It's frightening.
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To be a writer does not mean to preach a truth, it means to discover a truth.
Milan Kundera
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Such are the Splendors and Miseries of memory: it is proud of its ability to keep truthful track of the logical sequence of past events but when it comes to how we experienced them at the time, memory feels no obligation to truth.
Milan Kundera
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How goodness heightens beauty!
Milan Kundera
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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?
Milan Kundera
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Looking out over the courtyard at the dirty walls, he realized he had no idea whether it was hysteria or love.
Milan Kundera
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She was experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant: We are at the last station. The happiness meant: We are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness.
Milan Kundera
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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.
Milan Kundera
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For the body is temporal and thought is eternal and the shimmering essence of flame is an image of thought.
Milan Kundera
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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.
Milan Kundera
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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.
Milan Kundera
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We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold.
Milan Kundera
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I think I am a much better actor than I have allowed myself to be.
Milan Kundera
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The reign of imagagology begins where history ends.
Milan Kundera
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There is no perfection only life
Milan Kundera
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Tereza knew what happens during the moment love is born: the woman cannot resist the voice calling forth her terrified soul the man cannot resist the woman whose soul thus responds to his voice.
Milan Kundera
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We all reject out of hand the idea that the love of our life may be something light or weightless we presume our love is what must be, that without it our life would no longer be the same we feel that Beethoven himself, gloomy and awe-inspiring, is playing the “Es muss sein!” to our own great love.
Milan Kundera
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God has been kind to dogs in no putting a sense of beauty into their heads.
Milan Kundera