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The moment Kafka attracts more attenetion than Joseph K., Kafka's posthumous death begins.

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
Joseph
Attracts
Begins
Moment
Death
Moments
Posthumous
Kafka

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Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.
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Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.
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... characters are not born like people, of woman they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about.
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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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Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.
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A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.
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Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor
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In the world of highways, a beautiful landscape means: an island of beauty connected by a long line with other islands of beauty.
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No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches.
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The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question.
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No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll only an animal can do so, because only animals were not expelled from Paradise. The love between dog and man is idyllic. It knows no conflicts, no hair-raising scenes it knows no development.
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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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The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.
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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.
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He took over anger to intimidate subordinates, and in time anger took over him.
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The best actors do not let the wheels show.
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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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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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In her presence I could dare everything: sincerity, emotion, pathos.
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There is no perfection only life
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