Milan Kundera Quotes - Page 4

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As you live out your desolation, you can be either unhappy or happy. Having that choice is what constitutes your freedom.

Milan Kundera

Choices, Unhappy, Desolation

"Identity". Book by Milan Kundera, 1998.

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Solitude: a sweet absence of looks.

Milan Kundera

Sweet, Loneliness, Being Alone

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Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's beautiful.

Milan Kundera

Love, Beautiful, Two

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Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo.

Milan Kundera

Goal, Suffering, Unbearable

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But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?

Milan Kundera

Writing

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Young is the one that plunges in the future and never looks back.

Milan Kundera

Looks, Plunge, Young

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Woman is the future of man. That means that the world which was once formed in man's image will now be transformed to the image of woman. The more technical and mechanical, cold and metallic it becomes, the more it will need the kind of warmth that only the woman can give it. If we want to save the world, we must adapt to the woman, let ourselves be led by the woman, let ourselves be penetrated by the Ewigweiblich, the eternally feminine!

Milan Kundera

War, Mean, Men

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Totalitarianism is neither left nor right, and within its empire both will perish. I was never a believer, but after seeing Czech Catholics persecuted during the Stalinist terror, I felt the deepest solidarity with them. What separated us, the belief in God, was secondary to what united us. In Prague, they hanged the Socialists and the priests. Thus a fraternity of the hanged was born.

Milan Kundera

Catholic, Prague, Empires

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Every love relationship rests on an unwritten agreement unthinkingly concluded by the lovers in the first weeks of their love. They are still in a kind of dream but at the same time, without knowing it, are drawing up, like uncompromising lawyers, the detailed clauses of their contract. O lovers! Be careful in those dangerous first days! Once you've brought breakfast in bed you'll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal.

Milan Kundera

Dream, Betrayal, Drawing

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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.

Milan Kundera

Pain, Compassion, Imagination

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

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The present era grabs everything that was ever written in order to transform it into films, TV programs; or cartoons. What is essential in a novel is precisely what can only be expressed in a novel, and so every adaptation contains nothing but the non-essential. If a person is still crazy enough to write novels nowadays and wants to protect them, he has to write them in such a way that they cannot be adapted, in other words, in such a way that they cannot be retold.

Milan Kundera

Crazy, Book, Writing

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The longing for Paradise is man's longing not to be man.

Milan Kundera

Men, Paradise, Longing

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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

Purpose, Dazzle, Unbearable

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Sleep in my arms. Like a baby bird. Like a broom among brooms... in a broom closet. Like a tiny parrot. Like a whistle. Like a little song. A song sung by a forest... within a forest... a thousand years ago.

Milan Kundera

Song, Baby, Sleep

"Fictional character: Tomas". "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", www.imdb.com. February 5, 1988.

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Love is a desire for that lost half of ourselves.

Milan Kundera

Love Is, Desire, Half

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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. The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.

Milan Kundera

Attitude, People, Stupidity

"Siraaj: An Arab Tale". Book by Radwa Ashour and Barbara Romaine, 2007.

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

Milan Kundera

Pain, Reason, Reasonable

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...no one can do a thing about feelings, they exist and there's no way to censor them. We can reproach ourselves for some action, for a remark, but not for a feeling, quite simply because we have no control at all over it.

Milan Kundera

Feelings, Way, Action

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The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting.

Milan Kundera

Memories, Degrees, Forget

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There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting.

Milan Kundera

Memories, Secret, Forget

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When you sit face to face with someone who is pleasant, respectful, and polite, you have hard time reminding yourself that nothing he says is true/sincere.

Milan Kundera

Hard Times, Faces, Sincere

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No love can survive muteness.

Milan Kundera

No Love

"Identity". Book by Milan Kundera, 1998.

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The sound of laughter is like the vaulted dome of a temple of happiness.

Milan Kundera

Happiness, Laughter, Joy

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Attaching love to sex is one of the most bizarre ideas the Creator ever had.

Milan Kundera

Sex, Ideas, Bizarre

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Only a literary work that reveals an unknown fragment of human existence has a reason for being.

Milan Kundera

Reason, Fragments, Existence

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Born: April 1, 1929
Occupation: Writer
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