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The great European novel started out as entertainment, and every true novelist is nostalgic for it. In fact, the themes of those great entertainments are terribly serious-think of Cervantes!

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
Started
Novelist
Fact
Terribly
Facts
Novelists
True
European
Great
Theme
Cervantes
Every
Entertainment
Entertainments
Think
Novel
Nostalgic
Thinking
Serious
Themes

More quotes by Milan Kundera

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Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel it is its morality.
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The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented.
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Memory does not make films, it makes photographs.
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Eroticism is like a dance: one always leads the other.
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How goodness heightens beauty!
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She is sadder and sadder, and for a man there is no balm more soothing than the sadness he has caused a woman.
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Yes, if you're looking for infinity, just close your eyes!
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Yes, it's crazy. Love is either crazy or it's nothing at all.
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Isn't beer the holy libation of sincerity? The potion that dispels all hypocrisy, any charade of fine manners? The drink that does nothing worse than incite its fans to urinate in all innocence, to gain weight in all frankness?
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Sad company is bad company.
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Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.
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People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.
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The best actors do not let the wheels show.
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Nudity is the uniform of the other side... nudity is a shroud.
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People are going deaf because music is played louder and louder, but because they're going deaf, it has to be played louder still.
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There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echos.
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It takes so little, so infinitely little, for a person to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love, convictions, faith, history. Human life -- and herein lies its secret -- takes place in the immediate proximity of that border, even in direct contact with it it is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch.
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The sound of laughter is like the vaulted dome of a temple of happiness.
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The purpose of the poetry is not to dazzle us with an astonishing thought, but to make one moment of existence unforgettable and worthy of unbearable nostalgia.
Milan Kundera
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I have a strong will to love you for eternity.
Milan Kundera