Milan Kundera Quotes - Page 14

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Until that time, her betrayals had filled her with excitement and joy, because they opened up new paths to new adventures of betrayal. But what if the paths came to an end? One could betray one's parents, husband, country, love, but when parents, husband, country, and love were gone - what was left to betray?

Milan Kundera

Country, Husband, Betrayal

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In Irena’s head the alcohol plays a double role: it frees her fantasy, encourages her boldness, makes her sensual, and at the same time it dims her memory. She makes love wildly, lasciviously, and at the same time the curtain of oblivion wraps her lewdness in an all-concealing darkness. As if a poet were writing his greatest poem with ink that instantly disappears.

Milan Kundera

Memories, Writing, Play

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But deep down she said to herself, Franz maybe strong, but his strength is directed outward; when it comes to the people he lives with, the people he's loves, he's weak. Franz's weakness is called goodness. Franz would never give Sabina orders. He would never command her, as Tomas had, to lay the mirror on the floor and walk back and forth on it naked. Not that he lacks sensuality; he simply lacks the strength to give orders. There are things that can be accomplished only by violence. Physical love is unthinkable without violence.

Milan Kundera

Strong, Love Is, Mirrors

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We all reject out of hand the idea that the love of our life may be something light or weightless; we presume our love is what must be, that without it our life would no longer be the same; we feel that Beethoven himself, gloomy and awe-inspiring, is playing the “Es muss sein!” to our own great love.

Milan Kundera

Love Is, Light, Hands

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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.

Milan Kundera

Sadness, Men, Soothing

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Biographers know nothing about the intimate sex lives of their own wives,
but they think they know all about Stendhal's or Faulkner's.

Milan Kundera

Marriage, Sex, Thinking

"Revenge of the pygmies" by Robert McCrum, www.theguardian.com. June 24, 2000.

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High culture is nothing but a child of that European perversion called history, the obsession we have with going forward, with considering the sequence of generations a relay race in which everyone surpasses his predecessor . . .

Milan Kundera

Children, Race, Generations

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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)

Milan Kundera

Artist, Roles, World

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Even at the age of eight she would fall asleep by pressing one hand into the other and making believe she was holding the hand of the man whom she loved, the man of her life. So if in her sleep she pressed Tomas hand with such tenacity, we can understand why: she had been training since childhood.

Milan Kundera

Believe, Fall, Sleep

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The body was a cage, and inside that cage was something which looked, listened, feared, thought and marveled; that something, that remainder left over after the body had been accounted for, was the soul.

Milan Kundera

Soul, Body, Cages

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She had come to him to escape her mother's world, a world where all bodies were equal. She had come to him to make her body unique, irreplaceble. But he, too had drawn an equal sign between her and the rest of them: he kissed them all alike, stroked them all alike, made no, absolutely no distiction between Tereza's body and the other bodies. He sent her back to the world she tried to escape, sent to march naked with the other naked women

Milan Kundera

Mother, Unique, Naked

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She knew, of course that she was being supremely unfair, that Franz was the best man she ever had- he was intelligent, he understood her paintings, he was handsome and good-but the more she thought about it, the more she longed to ravish his intelligence, defile his kindheartedness, and violate his powerless strength

Milan Kundera

Intelligent, Men, Handsome

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When she is older she will see in these resemblances a regrettable uniformity among individuals (they all stop at the same spots to kiss, have the same tastes in clothing, flatter a woman with the same metaphor) and a tedious monotony among events (they are all just an endless repetition of the same one); but in her adolescence she welcomes these coincidences as miraculous and she is avid to decipher their meanings.

Milan Kundera

Kissing, Avid, Events

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Aesthetic racism is almost always a sign of inexperience. Those who have not made their way far enough into the world of amorous delights judge women only by what can be seen. But those who really know women understand that the eye reveals only a minute fraction of what a woman can offer us. When God bade mankind be fruitful and multiply, Doctor, He was thinking of the ugly as well as of the beautiful. I am convinced I might add, that the aesthetic criterion does not come from God but from the devil. In paradise no distinction was made between ugliness and beauty.

Milan Kundera

Beautiful, Eye, Thinking

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

Milan Kundera

Lying, Bed, Former Life

"The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

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

Milan Kundera

Fall, Pick Me Up, Messages

"Unbearable Lightness Of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, archive.org. 1984.

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A great deal has been said about love at first sight; I am perfectly aware of love's retrospective tendency to make a legend of itself, turn its beginnings into myth; so I don't want to assert that it was love; but I have no doubt there was a kind of clairvoyance at work: I immediately felt, sensed, grasped the essence of Lucie's being or, to be more precise, the essence of what she was later to become for me; Lucie had revealed herself to me the way religious truth reveals itself.

Milan Kundera

Religious, Sight, Essence

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But was it love? The feeling of wanting to die beside her was clearly exaggerated: he had seen her only once before in his life! Was it simply the hysteria of a man, who, aware deep down of his inaptitude for love, felt the self-deluding need to simulate it?

Milan Kundera

Men, Self, Hysteria

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it is wrong to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences... but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life a dimension of beauty.

Milan Kundera

Men, Mysterious, Coincidence

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Is not parody the eternal lot of man?

Milan Kundera

Men, Parody, Eternal

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For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves nor to others, was possible only away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies.

Milan Kundera

Lying, Mean, Eye

"The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

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The day after his father left, Franz and his mother went into town together, and as they left home Franz noticed that her shoes did not match. He was in a quandary: he wanted to point out the mistake, but was afraid he would hurt her. So, during the two hours they spent walking through the city together he kept his eyes focused on her feet. It was then he had his first inkling of what it means to suffer.

Milan Kundera

Mother, Hurt, Father

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

Milan Kundera

Book, Eye, Brotherhood

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

Milan Kundera

Body, Passionate, Surface

Milan Kundera (1974). “Laughable Loves”

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Fortunately women have the miraculous ability to change the meaning of their actions after the event.

Milan Kundera

Women, Events, Action

Milan Kundera (1974). “Laughable Loves”

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Born: April 1, 1929
Occupation: Writer
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