Milan Kundera Quotes

Any new possibility that existence acquires, even the least likely, transforms everything about existence.

Believe me, nothing is more beautiful than to carry out crazy ideas. I'd like my whole life to be one single crazy idea.

If I hadn't met you, I'd certainly have fallen in love with him.

The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question.

In the world of highways, a beautiful landscape means: an island of beauty connected by a long line with other islands of beauty.

When graves are covered with stones, the dead can no longer get out. But the dead can't go out anyway! What difference does it make whether they're covered with soil or stones?

what's the matter?" he asked "nothing" "what do you want me to do for you?" "i want you to be old. ten years older. twenty years older" what she meant was: i want you to be weak. as weak as i am.

But man, because he has only one life to live, cannot conduct experiments to test whether to follow his passion (compassion) or not.

a man possessed with peace is always smiling

I have a strong will to love you for eternity.

Pain doesn't listen to reason, it has it's own reason, which is not reasonable

and she realized that she (her soul) was not at all involved, only her body, her body alone. The body that had betrayed her and that she had sent out into the world among other bodies.

When we ignore the body, we are more easily victimized by it.

The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters.

The rediscovered path, where were left the traces of childhood's lost steps.

The reign of imagagology begins where history ends.

Children are the future, because mankind is moving more and more towards infancy.

But what had happened, had happened, and it was no longer possible to right anything.

Even in the game there lurks a lack of freedom; even in a game is a trap for the players.

Draw a line; draw a line that pleases you. And remember that it is not the artist's role to copy the outlines of things but to create a world of his own lines on paper." (pp.28-29)

I understood that there was no escaping the memories, that I was surround by them. (p.30)

By giving the love act a name, if only an innocent little word like, "it," he paved the way for other words, words that would reflect physical love as in a set of mirrors.

...[P]eople who shout joy from the rooftops are often the saddest of all... (p.24)

Aren't we living in a world where heedless men only desire decapitated women?

She was aware that in love even the most passionate idealism will not rid the body's surface of its terrible, basic importance.

How did the senator know that children meant happiness? Could he see into their souls? What if the moment they were out of sight, three of them jumped the fourth and began beating him up?

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

I find myself fascinating.

Disgust at having to talk about oneself is what distinguishes novelistic talent from lyric talent.

She knew that there were all kinds of ways to make a conquest and that one of the surest roads to a woman's genitals was through her sadness.

In eroticism as dance: one of the partners is always charged with leading the other.

Fidelity gives a unity to lives that would otherwise splinter into thousands of split-second impressions.

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.

There are things that can be accomplished only by violence. Physical love is unthinkable without violence.

"Pick me up," is the message of a person who keeps falling. Tomas kept picking her up, patiently.

The novel is a territory where one does not make assertions; it is a territory of play and of hypotheses.

Is not parody the eternal lot of man?

Solitude: a sweet absence of looks.

People derived too much pleasure from seeing their fellow man morally humiliated to spoil that pleasure by hearing out an explanation.

The border between good and evil is terribly fuzzy.

In Tereza's eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood

No one can get really drunk on a novel or a painting, but who can help getting drunk on Reethoven's Ninth, Rartok's Sonata for Two Pianos and Percussion, or the Reatles' White Album?

She is sadder and sadder, and for a man there is no balm more soothing than the sadness he has caused a woman.

But if God is gone and man is no longer master, then who is master?

He Kept recalling her lying on his bed; she reminded him of no one in his former life.

Forgive me," he went on. "For a long time I have had the peculiar habit of not arriving but appearing.

For the body is temporal and thought is eternal and the shimmering essence of flame is an image of thought.

...because love is continual interrogation. I don't know of a better definition of love.

(God) being the old man invented in order to, and with whom to, hold long conversations.

When graves are covered with stones, the dead can no longer get out. But the dead can’t go out anyway! What difference does it make whether they’re covered with soil or stones?