Quote

Merely by being born intelligent, you right away find yourself in absolute exile.

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
Absolute
Merely
Intelligent
Born
Away
Find
Right
Exile
Absolutes

More quotes by Milan Kundera

Image
a man possessed with peace is always smiling
Milan Kundera
Image
And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle it runs ahead in a straight line. That is why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.
Milan Kundera
Image
Remembering now all those farewells (fake farewells, worked-up farewells), Irena thinks: a person who messes up her goodbyes shouldn’t expect much from her re-unions.
Milan Kundera
Image
[W]e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory.
Milan Kundera
Image
The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.
Milan Kundera
Image
Radio... force-feeds us music... everywhere and all the time... sewage-water music in which music is dying.
Milan Kundera
Image
Immortality no longer interests the weary old man at all.
Milan Kundera
Image
The beauty of New York is unintentional it arose independent of human design, like a stalagmite cavern.
Milan Kundera
Image
Is a novel anything but a trap set for a hero?
Milan Kundera
Image
Only after a while did it occur to me (in spite of the chilly silence which surrounded me) that my story was not of the tragic sort, but rather of the comic variety. At any rate that afforded me some comfort.
Milan Kundera
Image
Love is a continual interrogation. I don’t know of a better definition of love.
Milan Kundera
Image
The ludicrous element in our feeling does not make them any less authentic.
Milan Kundera
Image
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
Image
The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting.
Milan Kundera
Image
You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.
Milan Kundera
Image
Perhaps if they had stayed together longer, Sabina and Franz would have begun to understand the words they used. Gradually, timorously, their vocabularies would have come together, like bashful lovers, and the music of one would have begun to intersect with the music of the other. But it was too late now.
Milan Kundera
Image
How goodness heightens beauty!
Milan Kundera
Image
Why don't you ever use your strength on me? she said. Because love means renouncing strength, said Franz softly.
Milan Kundera
Image
For he was aware of the great secret of life: Women don't look for handsome men. Women look for men who have had beautiful women. Having an ugly mistress is therefore a fatal mistake.
Milan Kundera
Image
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