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In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.

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
Kitsch
Totalitarian
Realm
Realms
Advance
Questions
Answers
Given
Preclude

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Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.
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The beauty of New York is unintentional it arose independent of human design, like a stalagmite cavern.
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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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I think, therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.
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The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.
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She regarded books as the emblems of secret brotherhood. A man with this sort of library couldn't possibly hurt her.
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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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Now time has a very different look it is no longer the conquering present capturing the future it is the present conquered and captured and carried off by the past.
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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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Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent.
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The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question.
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And I ran after that voice through the streets so as not to lose sight of the splendid wreath of bodies gliding over the city, and I realized with anguish in my heart that they were flying like birds and I was falling like a stone, that they had wings and I would never have any.
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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 source of anxiety lies in the future. If you can keep the future out of mind, you can forget your worries.
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...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.
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But then he told himself: What does it really mean to be useful? Today's world, just as it is, contains the sum of the utility of all people of all times. Which implies: The highest morality consists in being useless.
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We go through the present blindfolded... Only later, when the blindfold is removed and we examine the past, do we realize what we've been through and understand what it means.
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Immortality no longer interests the weary old man at all.
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Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood.
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Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo.
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