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Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel it is its morality.

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
Suspending
Immorality
Morality
Judgment
Novel
Moral

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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.
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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.
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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 How can anyone state categorically that a thought he once had is no longer valid?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.
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I am not worthy of my suffering. A great sentence. It suggests not only that suffering is the basis of the self, its sole indubitable ontological proof, but also that it is the one feeling most worthy of respect the value of all values.
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Beauty has long since disappeared. It has slipped beneath the surface of the noise, the noise of words, sunk deep as Atlantis. The only thing left of it is the word, whose meaning loses clarity from year to year.
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loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.
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Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's very beautiful. But what would they nourish their intimate talk with? However contemptible the world may be, they still need it to be able to talk together.
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Is a novel anything but a trap set for a hero?
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The novelist's ambition is not to do something better than his predecessors but to see what they did not see, say what they did not say.
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The sound of laughter is like the vaulted dome of a temple of happiness.
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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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Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.
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In her presence I could dare everything: sincerity, emotion, pathos.
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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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I am not in favor of imposing happiness on people. Everyone has a right to his bad wine, to his stupidity, and to his dirty fingernails.
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Between the approximation of the idea and the precision of reality there was a small gap of the unimaginable, and it was this hiatus that gave him no rest.
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we might also call vertigo the intoxication of the weak. aware of his weakness, a man decides to give in rather than stand up to it. he is drunk with weakness, wishes to grow even weaker, wishes to fall down in the middle of the main square in front of everybody, wishes to be down, lower than down.
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La memoria no guarda películas, guarda fotografías.
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