Milan Kundera Quotes - Page 7

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• Tereza's mother never stopped reminding her that being a mother meant sacrificing everything. Her words had the ring of truth, backed as they were by the experience of a woman who had lost everything because of her child. Tereza would listen and believe that being a mother was the highest value in life and that being a mother was a great sacrifice. If a mother was Sacrifice personified, then a daughter was Guilt, with no possibility of redress.

  Milan Kundera

  Daughter, Mother, Children

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

  Milan Kundera

  Novelists, World, Teach

  "The Most Original Book of the Season". Interview with Philip Roth, www.nytimes.com. November 30, 1980.

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• The more vast the amount of time we've left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it.

  Milan Kundera

  Voice, Calling, Return

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• Necessity knows no magic formulae-they are all left to chance. If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders.

  Milan Kundera

  Love Is, Bird, Magic

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• And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?

  Milan Kundera

  Rehearsal, Firsts, Unbearable

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

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• No episode is a priori condemned to remain an episode forever, for every event, no matter how trivial, conceals within itself the possibility of sooner or later becoming the cause of other events and thus changing into a story or an adventure. Episodes are like land mines. The majority of them never explode, but the most unremarkable of them may someday turn into a story that will prove fateful to you.

  Milan Kundera

  Adventure, Land, Forever

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• A constant interrogation.

  Milan Kundera

  Love, Constant, Interrogation

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• A single metaphor can give birth to love.

  Milan Kundera

  Giving, Unbearable, Birth

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

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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.

  Milan Kundera

  Hurt, Book, Men

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• We go through the present blindfolded... Only later, when the blindfold is removed and we examine the past, do we realize what we've been through and understand what it means.

  Milan Kundera

  Mean, Past, Realizing

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• The combination of a frivolous form and a serious subject immediately unmasks the truth about our dramas.

  Milan Kundera

  Drama, Serious Subjects, Form

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• We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold.

  Milan Kundera

  Actors, Warning, Rehearsal

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• In her presence I could dare everything: sincerity, emotion, pathos.

  Milan Kundera

  Emotion, Sincerity, Pathos

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• ...people don't respect the morning. An alarm clock violently wakes them up, shatters their sleep like the blow of an ax, and they immediately surrender themselves to deadly haste. Can you tell me what kind of day can follow a beginning of such violence? What happens to people whose alarm clock daily gives them a small electric shock? Each day they become more used to violence and less used to pleasure.

  Milan Kundera

  Morning, Sleep, Blow

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• In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

  Milan Kundera

  Sunset, Auras, Unbearable

  "The Unbearable Lightness of Being", 1988.

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• Living for Sabina meant seeing. Seeing is limited by two borders: strong light, which blinds, and total darkness. Perhaps that was what motivated Sabina's distaste for all extremism. Extremes mean borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death.

  Milan Kundera

  Art, Strong, Passion

  "Nesnesitelna lehkost byti (The Unbearable Lightness of Being)". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

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• Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limit of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.

  Milan Kundera

  Children, Questions And Answers, Limits

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

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• Sometimes you make up your mind about something without knowing why, and your decision persists by the power of inertia. Every year it gets harder to change.

  Milan Kundera

  Years, Knowing, Decision

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• And there lies the horror: the past we remember is devoid of time. Impossible to reexperience a love the way we reread a book or resee a film.

  Milan Kundera

  Lying, Book, Past

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• Nothing requires a greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of non-thought.

  Milan Kundera

  Effort, Argument, Justify

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• Einmal ist keinmal, says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.

  Milan Kundera

  Life, Might, Unbearable Lightness Of Being

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• To put it another way, every love relationship is based upon unwritten conventions rashly agreed upon by the lovers during the first weeks of their love. On the one hand, they are living a sort of dream; on the other, without realizing it, they are drawing up the fine print of their contracts like the most hard-nosed of lawyers. O lovers! Be wary during those perilous first days! If you serve the other party breakfast in bed, you will be obliged to continue same in perpetuity or face charges of animosity and treason!

  Milan Kundera

  Dream, Party, Drawing

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• All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.

  Milan Kundera

  Bisexual, Novel, Great Novels

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• Since the insignificance of all things is our lot, we should not bear it as an affliction but learn to enjoy it.

  Milan Kundera

  Affliction, Bears, Should

  "Identity". Book by Milan Kundera, 1998.

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• Love is a battle, and I plan to go on fighting. To the end.

  Milan Kundera

  Fighting, Love Is, Battle

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

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