She spoke about it with such emphasis (somewhat affected) that I could see at once that I was hearing the manifesto of her generation. Every generation has its own set of passions, loves, and interests, which it professes with a certain tenacity, to differentiate it from older generations and to confirm itself in its uniqueness. Submitting to a generation mentality (to this pride of the herd) has always repelled me. After Miss Broz had developed her provocative argument (I've now heard it at least fifty times from people her age) that all mankind is divided into those who give hitchhikers lifts (human people who love adventure) and those who don't (inhuman people who fear life), I jokingly called her a "dogmatist of the hitch." She answered sharply that she was neither dogmatist nor revisionist nor sectarian nor deviationist, that those were all words of ours, that we had invented them, that they belonged to us, and that they were completely alien to them.


Milan Kundera

  Email Quote to Friends   Link to Quote   Create Short URL  Publish Text About This Quote   Share on Facebook, Twitter, and more
  See Recommended Quotes For You

Related

All I ever did to that apartment was hang fifty yards of yellow theatrical silk across the bedroom w...
JOAN DIDION
We can never make proper goodbyes. It was your last ride in a Checker cab and you had no warning. It...
COLSON WHITEHEAD
When the soul is naughted and transformed, then of herself she neither works nor speaks nor wills, n...
ST. CATHERINE OF GENOA
I never thought I’d ever leave Zerc. But after knowing Cricket, it occurred to me that I had no re...
ASH GRAY
Those who had seen eyes like hers before understood instantly that she was a woman who had suffered,...
DANIELLE STEEL
Also another time she had wakened in dead of night, thinking that something touched her, and when sh...
EVANGELINE WALTON
She was a super teacher, ... She was so crippled with arthritis that when the students went to the p...
MAGGIE MALONE
There was no real need for her to tell them that yet again, but that was all right with her. She was...
DAVID WEBER
Of the people who were at that board meeting, can I see a show of hands of those who heard her cuss ...
KIM ANDERSON
This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death ...
ERICH MARIA REMARQUE
She never opened her mail in the middle of the day. Sometimes she forgot about it for a week or more...
NICCI FRENCH
My reflections amount to a love story that is mostly made up, from memories that are mostly false, b...
OLIVIA SUDJIC
She sat up, cheeks flushed and golden hair tousled. She was so beautiful that it made my soul ache. ...
RICHELLE MEAD
But now that she had achieved knighthood, and thought and acted as she wanted and decided, for one h...
KATHY ACKER
Her mother had once told her that there were men who kept secrets bottled up inside and that it spel...
NICHOLAS SPARKS
She was calm and quiet now with knowing what she had always known, what neither her parents nor Aunt...
RICHARD YATES
The death of her father and mother and the rich acres of and that had come down to her had set a tra...
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
Dr. Talbon was struck by another very important thing. It all hung together. The stories Cheryl told...
CHERYL HERSHA
Her skill set is working with people who have intransigent positions and moderating them. The disgus...
BARBARA O'CONNOR
Midland City had a goddess of discord all its own. This was a goddess who could not dance, would not...
KURT VONNEGUT
Her thoughts ran away to her girlhood with its passionate longing for adventure and she remembered t...
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
Thirrin Freer Strong-in-the-Arm Lindenshield carried her names with ease. She was thirteen years old...
STUART HILL
He, too, stood looking at her for a moment--and it seemed to her that it was not a look of greeting ...
AYN RAND
It's funny, most people can be around someone and they gradually begin to love them and never know e...
FANNIE FLAGG
My mother has made choices in her life, as we all must, and she is at peace with them. I can see her...
ELIZABETH GILBERT
He always thought of the sea as 'la mar' which is what people call her in Spanish when they love her...
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
Adeline was really rather charming, she always had a man in her life, but it never worked out: eithe...
FRANçOIS LELORD
They were talking more distantly than if they were strangers who had just met, for if they had been ...
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Feast of Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, Teacher, Martyr, c.200 It was my generation, and the ge...
FRANCIS SCHAEFFER
Those were the people who made her something, and without them she was different. She'd held on to t...
ANN BRASHARES
Was it love or wasn't it that she felt for Carol? And how absurd it was that she didn't even know. S...
PATRICIA HIGHSMITH
Besides her family, the only other permanent part of her life was with her friends online. She could...
STEVAN V. NIKOLIC
Well, thought Winnie, crossing her arms on the windowsill, she was different. Things had happ...
NATALIE BABBITT
She knows Daddy better than I do. I think it's because she's felt since we were children that our Da...
JAMES BALDWIN
...It often seemed to her that she thought too much about herself, you could have made her blush any...
HENRY JAMES
It was at that moment Stephanie became acutely aware of the paradox of the police wife.
She mu...
KAREN RODWILL SOLOMON
If [Patricia Highsmith] saw an acquaintance walking down the sidewalk she would deliberately cross o...
ANDREW WILSON
She was neither white nor black, Fyre nor Aquanite; she was a dame of the White King, and it was up ...
CHRISTINE E. SCHULZE
Yet it seemed to Bega that if she could continue to read, which had come so easily to her... then th...
MELVYNN BRAGG
And she looked upon the mirror that was given as a gift. She hated everything about it, from the cir...
ANTHONY LICCIONE
Francesca was a strong believer in fate. She assumed he picked up the habit from her therapist who w...
COURTNEY CAROLA
Never in all her life had she imagined that this idolized millinery could look, to those who paid fo...
CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN
It was foolish indeed - thus to run farther and farther from all who could help her, as if she had b...
GEORGE MACDONALD
She observed the dumb-show by which her neighbour was expressing her passion for music, but she refr...
MARCEL PROUST
The wide world was changing, and she wanted a different place in it.

Not just wanted, but...
JAMES ROBERTSON
She opened her eyes slowly and saw that a pale lavender moth had come to a rest on the back of her h...
SARAH ADDISON ALLEN
Anyone who looked more white folkish than herself was better than she was in her criteria, therefore...
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
She thought often of her own death, but without fear, loss having been her only belonging in this li...
ESI EDUGYAN
Mary Queen of Scots had a little dog, a Skye terrier, that was devoted to her. Moments after Mary wa...
ELIZABETH WEIN
This was our house. Mine and hers. I know she’d sneak over to the rectory every once in a while an...
TIFFANY REISZ
The insistent drums were an unwelcome reminder of the existence of another world, wholly autonomous,...
PAUL BOWLES
I thank God for schools that are serious about the gospel of Jesus Christ. They are vital to perpetu...
JAMES C. DOBSON
Mine eyes Were not in fault, for she was beautiful; Mine ears, that heard her flattery; nor my...
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Food Allergies Are Not Due to Food, Rather Are Due to the Constant Contamination of That Food That Y...
THEHEALTHFOODGURU
She stared at herself in the mirror. Her eyes were dark, almost black, filled with pain. She'd let s...
CHRISTINE FEEHAN
It seemed to me an error in reasoning for a man to isolate a woman he loves from all the circumstanc...
MILAN KUNDERA
I'm asking God to bless you with something that unsettles you, disturbs you, and upsets you.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
28. Feelings are neither right nor wrong. It's what you do with them that causes the problems.
JAMES C. DOBSON
Suddenly she hated them all because they were different from her, because they carried their losses ...
MARGARET MITCHELL
There were plenty of women around who dressed smartly, and plenty more who dressed to impress, but t...
HARUKI MURAKAMI
Amanda had to wear a weighted body suit to give her the structure of a boy. She handled it great, ex...
ANDY FICKMAN
She could now be sad without losing a jot of hope. Nay, rather, the least approach of sadness would ...
GEORGE MACDONALD
First came bright Spirits, not the Spirits of men, who danced and scattered flowers. Then, on the le...
C.S. LEWIS
And because she was young, and so damn clever and amusing and wonderful, wherever she made her home,...
SARAH J. MAAS
She could not picture it. Herself riding on the subway or streetcar, caring for new horses, talking ...
ALICE MUNRO
Yes; he had done it. She was in the carriage, and felt that he had placed her there, that his will a...
JANE AUSTEN
The world is divided into those who screw and those who do not. He distrusted those who did not—wh...
GABRIEL GARCíA MáRQUEZ
Every generation inherits a world it never made; and, as it does so, it automatically becomes the tr...
ROBERT KENNEDY
Oprah was not somebody who was telling us what to do, she wasn't really teaching us like so many...
BONNIE HUNT
Smiling wistfully at the thought of her beloved sister, Daisy felt a wave of loneliness sweep over h...
LISA KLEYPAS
Now, if that's how she reacted to the arrival of a new television set and having to learn how to use...
GREG DYKE
And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been...
KURT VONNEGUT JR.
And Lot's wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been...
KURT VONNEGUT
Amanda herself couldn't understand why her writing was so different from her own personality. Her pe...
LISA KLEYPAS
She tried to think of what to say to make it all better again, or at least the way it was before she...
CHERYL STRAYED
I think at a young age, there were a couple major catastrophes that happened in her life that very e...
MATT ANDERSON
I think at a young age, there were a couple major catastrophes that happened in her life that very e...
MATT ANDERSON
Sometimes Coraline would forget who she was while she was daydreaming that she was exploring the Arc...
NEIL GAIMAN
The months passed away. Slowly a great fear came over Viola, a fear that would hardly ever leave her...
BARRY PAIN
We pleaded that whatever was fit to be done at all might with propriety be done by anybody who did i...
LUCY STONE
A woman in her thirties came to see me. As she greeted me, I could sense the pain behind her polite ...
ECKHART TOLLE
At fifty-one, why would she choose to dispose of her house, uproot herself, and come here to be a pa...
DEAN KOONTZ
Sophie said to me once that she was glad she had been scarred. She said that whoever loved her now w...
CASSANDRA CLARE
They were both comparative mirrors of each other. It was clear to her now more than he had used her ...
CRYSTAL EVANS
She narrowed her eyes at him. She wanted to tell him that it was his fault, that she would ne...
KIMBERLY DERTING
A young man who had watched her eating with her fingers offered a set of chopsticks- those sticks fo...
DONNA JO NAPOLI
And it occurred to her that reading was, among other things, a muscle and one that she had seemingly...
ALAN BENNETT
I thought I was in love with Leola, by which I meant that if I could have found her in a quiet corne...
ROBERTSON DAVIES
She has committed no crime, she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a co...
HARPER LEE
In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonge...
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
We talk about it and we actually did it this time. When a player's out, you have to kind of forget a...
SUE BIRD
Life is weird and wonderful like that, is it not.
SONYA.E.WILLIAMS
She hated that will had this effect on her. Hated it. She knew better. She knew what he thought of h...
CASSANDRA CLARE
I realized that day that blessings come in a variety of shapes, colors, and sizes.
CRAIG GROESCHEL
It was one of those days where she was going to hit the ball no matter who was throwing. She had a s...
JAMIE RICHARDSON
Insofar as she recognized at all that she was dreaming, she realized that she must be exploring her ...
DOUGLAS ADAMS
Godfrey's wife, Charmian, sat with her eyes closed, attempting to put her thoughts into alphabetical...
MURIEL SPARK
I never heard weeping like that before or after; not from a child, nor a man wounded in the palm, no...
C.S. LEWIS
For years I wondered what was her curious power, her ability to attract all kinds of people to her a...
ELIZABETH WINDER
Karou was mysterious. She had no apparent family, she never talked about herself, and she was expert...
LAINI TAYLOR

More Milan Kundera

All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.
MILAN KUNDERA
Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists o...
MILAN KUNDERA
We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be w...
MILAN KUNDERA
A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the n...
MILAN KUNDERA
The word change, so dear to our Europe, has been given a new meaning: it no longer means a new stage...
MILAN KUNDERA
Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on ...
MILAN KUNDERA
The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused...
MILAN KUNDERA
Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different b...
MILAN KUNDERA
Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear...
MILAN KUNDERA
And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a...
MILAN KUNDERA
People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apat...
MILAN KUNDERA
for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain on...
MILAN KUNDERA
When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.
MILAN KUNDERA
You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange.
MILAN KUNDERA
Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's beautiful.
MILAN KUNDERA
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
MILAN KUNDERA
I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.
MILAN KUNDERA
A gesture cannot be regarded as the expression of an individual, as his creation (because no individ...
MILAN KUNDERA
We don't know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don't under...
MILAN KUNDERA
Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of it...
MILAN KUNDERA
A wave of anger washed over me, anger against myself, at my age at the time, that stupid lyrically a...
MILAN KUNDERA
The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually...
MILAN KUNDERA
For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his b...
MILAN KUNDERA
The present era grabs everything that was ever written in order to transform it into films, TV progr...
MILAN KUNDERA
We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our em...
MILAN KUNDERA
High culture is nothing but a child of that European perversion called history, the obsession we hav...
MILAN KUNDERA
Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical acci...
MILAN KUNDERA
Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries.
MILAN KUNDERA
Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see i...
MILAN KUNDERA
True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has...
MILAN KUNDERA
There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one fe...
MILAN KUNDERA
The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel t...
MILAN KUNDERA
No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a ...
MILAN KUNDERA
A worker may be the hammer's master, but the hammer still prevails. A tool knows exactly how it is m...
MILAN KUNDERA
The reign of imagagology begins where history ends.
MILAN KUNDERA
Optimism is the opium of the people.
MILAN KUNDERA
Nudity is the uniform of the other side... nudity is a shroud.
MILAN KUNDERA
Mysticism and exaggeration go together. A mystic must not fear ridicule if he is to push all the way...
MILAN KUNDERA
The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of f...
MILAN KUNDERA
Eroticism is like a dance: one always leads the other.
MILAN KUNDERA
O lovers! Be careful in those dangerous first days! Once you’ve brought breakfast in bed you’ll ...
MILAN KUNDERA
Solitude: a sweet absence of looks.
MILAN KUNDERA
I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was ...
MILAN KUNDERA
Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent.
MILAN KUNDERA
To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing w...
MILAN KUNDERA
The sound of laughter is like the vaulted dome of a temple of happiness.
MILAN KUNDERA
Tereza's mother never stopped reminding her that being a mother meant sacrificing everything. Her wo...
MILAN KUNDERA
The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance...
MILAN KUNDERA
Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most nai...
MILAN KUNDERA
The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually...
MILAN KUNDERA
Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity.
MILAN KUNDERA
Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.
MILAN KUNDERA
Listening to a news broadcast is like smoking a cigarette and crushing the butt in the ashtray.
MILAN KUNDERA
A worker may be the hammer's master, but the hammer still prevails. A tool knows exactly how it ...
MILAN KUNDERA
I think I am a much better actor than I have allowed myself to be.
MILAN KUNDERA
Revolution in Love’. Can you tell me what you mean by that? Do you want free love as against bourg...
MILAN KUNDERA
The longing for Paradise is man's longing not to be man.
MILAN KUNDERA
How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can you suffer from the absence ...
MILAN KUNDERA
When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is ...
MILAN KUNDERA
We pass through the present with our eyes blindfolded. We are permitted merely to sense and guess at...
MILAN KUNDERA
Yes, suddenly I saw it clearly: most people deceive themselves with a pair of faiths: they believe i...
MILAN KUNDERA
I am incapable of speaking of myself and of my life and the states of my soul, I am discreet to an a...
MILAN KUNDERA
Every change of scene requires new expositions, descriptions, explanations.
MILAN KUNDERA
Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when...
MILAN KUNDERA
Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation.
MILAN KUNDERA
Mysticism and exaggeration go together. A mystic must not fear ridicule if he is to push all the wa...
MILAN KUNDERA
A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it...
MILAN KUNDERA
In Irena’s head the alcohol plays a double role: it frees her fantasy, encourages her boldness, ma...
MILAN KUNDERA
Woman is the future of man. That means that the world which was once formed in man's image will now ...
MILAN KUNDERA
Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with...
MILAN KUNDERA
Solitude: sweet absence of faces.
MILAN KUNDERA
Young is the one that plunges in the future and never looks back.
MILAN KUNDERA
Love is a desire for that lost half of ourselves.
MILAN KUNDERA
Happiness is the longing for repetition.
MILAN KUNDERA
'I think therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches
MILAN KUNDERA
The worth of a human being lies in the ability to extend oneself, to go outside oneself, to exist in...
MILAN KUNDERA
As early as 1930 Schoenberg wrote: "Radio is an enemy, a ruthless enemy marching irresistibly forwar...
MILAN KUNDERA
He took over anger to intimidate subordinates, and in time anger took over him.
MILAN KUNDERA
The reign of imagagology begins where history ends
MILAN KUNDERA
The source of anxiety lies in the future. If you can keep the future out of mind, you can forget you...
MILAN KUNDERA
How goodness heightens beauty!
MILAN KUNDERA
Nothing requires a greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of non-thought.
MILAN KUNDERA
People are going deaf because music is played louder and louder, but because they're going deaf, it ...
MILAN KUNDERA
Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times...
MILAN KUNDERA
Only a literary work that reveals an unknown fragment of human existence has a reason for being.
MILAN KUNDERA
There is no perfection only life
MILAN KUNDERA
A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.
MILAN KUNDERA
Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.
MILAN KUNDERA
No matter how much we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition.
MILAN KUNDERA
In order to make the novel into a polyhistorical illumination of existence, you need to master the t...
MILAN KUNDERA
The Transformation of music into noise was a planetary process by which mankind was entering the his...
MILAN KUNDERA
Man's world is the planet of inexperience.
MILAN KUNDERA
In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotin...
MILAN KUNDERA
The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry...
MILAN KUNDERA
When I was a little boy in short pants, I dreamed about a miraculous ointment that would make me inv...
MILAN KUNDERA
We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our pr...
MILAN KUNDERA
He suddenly recalled from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split then in two,...
MILAN KUNDERA
A mismatched outfit, a slightly defective denture, an exquisite mediocrity of the soul-those are the...
MILAN KUNDERA
For he was aware of the great secret of life: Women don't look for handsome men. Women look for men ...
MILAN KUNDERA
People are going deaf because music is played louder and louder, but because they're going deaf,...
MILAN KUNDERA
We all need someone to look at us. we can be divided into four categories according to the kind of l...
MILAN KUNDERA
You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagina...
MILAN KUNDERA
What drove such people to their sinister occupations? Spite? Certainly, but also the desire for orde...
MILAN KUNDERA
The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes fr...
MILAN KUNDERA
There are metaphysical problems, problems of human existence, that philosophy has never known how to...
MILAN KUNDERA
The religion of orgasm: utilitarianism projected into sex life; efficiency versus indolence; coition...
MILAN KUNDERA
Estoy bajo el agua y los latidos de mi corazón producen círculos en la superficie.
MILAN KUNDERA
I think, therefore I am is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. I f...
MILAN KUNDERA
Physical love is unthinkable without violence.
MILAN KUNDERA
There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain on...
MILAN KUNDERA
A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the n...
MILAN KUNDERA
There are no small parts. Only small actors.
MILAN KUNDERA
Tomas turned the key and switched on the ceiling light. Teraza saw two beds pushed together, one of ...
MILAN KUNDERA
We don't know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don't under...
MILAN KUNDERA
Nothing requires a greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of non-thought.
MILAN KUNDERA
Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on ...
MILAN KUNDERA
There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one fe...
MILAN KUNDERA
Missão, Tereza, é uma palavra idiota. Eu não tenho missão. Ninguém tem missão. E é um alívio...
MILAN KUNDERA
The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of th...
MILAN KUNDERA
Humanity's true moral test, its fundamental test…consists of its attitude towards those who are at...
MILAN KUNDERA
given the nature of the human couple, the love of a man and a woman is a priori inferior to that whi...
MILAN KUNDERA
No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals we...
MILAN KUNDERA
I understand you, and I shall not attempt to make you change your mind. I am too old to want to impr...
MILAN KUNDERA
Not only have people stopped trying to be attractive when they are out among other people, but they ...
MILAN KUNDERA
Not only have people stopped trying to be
attractive when they are out among other people, but...
MILAN KUNDERA
In any case, it seems to me that all over the world people nowadays prefer to judge rather than to u...
MILAN KUNDERA
The best actors do not let the wheels show.
MILAN KUNDERA
Because to live in a world in which no one is forgiven, where all are irredeemable, is the same a...
MILAN KUNDERA
Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is ...
MILAN KUNDERA
It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothes...
MILAN KUNDERA
For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves nor to others, was possible only away from t...
MILAN KUNDERA
For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves not others, was possible only away from the ...
MILAN KUNDERA
Horror is a shock, a time of utter blindness. Horror lacks every hint of beauty. All we can see is t...
MILAN KUNDERA
Totalitarianism is not only hell, but all the dream of paradise-- the age-old dream of a world where...
MILAN KUNDERA
It was vertigo. A heady, insuperable longing to fall. We might also call vertigo the intoxication of...
MILAN KUNDERA
True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has...
MILAN KUNDERA
We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our em...
MILAN KUNDERA
Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end.
MILAN KUNDERA
I find myself fascinating.
MILAN KUNDERA
This is the image from which he was born...... Characters are not born, like people, of woman; they ...
MILAN KUNDERA
People who shout joy from the rooftops are often the saddest of all.
MILAN KUNDERA
Having had occasion in the past to observe Communist statesmen, I saw with surprise that they were o...
MILAN KUNDERA
A man is responsible for his ignorance.
MILAN KUNDERA
Why don't you ever use your strength on me?" she said.
Because love means renouncing strength,"...
MILAN KUNDERA
Does he love me? Does he love anyone more than me? Does he love me more than I love him? Perhaps all...
MILAN KUNDERA
The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows n...
MILAN KUNDERA
And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?
MILAN KUNDERA
loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.
MILAN KUNDERA
There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We ...
MILAN KUNDERA
I want you to be weak. As weak as I am.
MILAN KUNDERA
The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records ever...
MILAN KUNDERA
A single metaphor can give birth to love.
MILAN KUNDERA
she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as...
MILAN KUNDERA
She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women. Don't let me go, hold me t...
MILAN KUNDERA
The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed...
MILAN KUNDERA
[W]e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory.
MILAN KUNDERA
During the twenty years of Odesseus' absence, the people of Ithaca retained many recollections of hi...
MILAN KUNDERA
ქვეყნისათვის სიცოცხლის გაწირვა: ყველ...
MILAN KUNDERA
Mesmerized, all she can do is watch this piece of her life move off; all she can do is watch it and ...
MILAN KUNDERA
All predictions are wrong, that's one of the few certainties granted to mankind.
MILAN KUNDERA
In that etymological light nostalgia seems something like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing. You...
MILAN KUNDERA
If in the past people would listen to music out of love for music, nowadays it roars everywhere and ...
MILAN KUNDERA
إذ يستطيع جيشان كبيران أن يتصارعا حتى الموت من أجل قضاي...
MILAN KUNDERA
A person who messes up her goodbyes shouldn't expect much from her reunions.
MILAN KUNDERA
That’s another enigma about memory, more basic than all the rest: do recollections have some measu...
MILAN KUNDERA
كلما كان الزمن الذي نخلفه وراءنا أكبر كلما أصبح الصوت ا...
MILAN KUNDERA
In Spanish añoranza comes from the verb añorar (to feel nostalgia), which comes from the Catalan e...
MILAN KUNDERA
Remembering now all those farewells (fake farewells, worked-up farewells), Irena thinks: a person wh...
MILAN KUNDERA
تختفي الذكريات إذا لم تُستحضر مرة وأخرى في أحاديث الأص�...
MILAN KUNDERA
أتخيل انفعال كائنين يلتقيان بعد سنوات. قديما تعاشرا، ف�...
MILAN KUNDERA
Now time has a very different look; it is no longer the conquering present capturing the future; it ...
MILAN KUNDERA
When she is older she will see in these resemblances a regrettable uniformity among individuals (the...
MILAN KUNDERA
We will never cease our critique of those persons who distort the past, rewrite it, falsify it, who ...
MILAN KUNDERA
En griego, «regreso» se dice nostos. Algos significa “sufrimiento”. La nostalgia es, pues, el ...
MILAN KUNDERA
And there lies the horror: the past we remember is devoid of time. Impossible to reexperience a love...
MILAN KUNDERA
The more vast the amount of time we've left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us...
MILAN KUNDERA
Man can only be certain about the present moment. But is that quite true either? Can he really know ...
MILAN KUNDERA
To die; to decide to die; that's much easier for an adolescent than for an adult. What? Doesn't deat...
MILAN KUNDERA
The girl was grateful to the young man for every bit of flattery; she wanted to linger for a moment ...
MILAN KUNDERA
Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything ex...
MILAN KUNDERA
Flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee.
MILAN KUNDERA
The only relationship that can make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place ...
MILAN KUNDERA
But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.
MILAN KUNDERA
Human life occurs only once, and the reason we cannot determine which of our decisions are good and ...
MILAN KUNDERA
When we want to give expression to a dramatic situation in our lives, we tend to use metaphors of he...
MILAN KUNDERA
Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional ...
MILAN KUNDERA
Yes, it was too late, and Sabina knew she would leave Paris, move on, and on again, because were she...
MILAN KUNDERA
The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of f...
MILAN KUNDERA
In the political jargon of those days, the word "intellectual" was an insult. It indicated someone w...
MILAN KUNDERA
A young woman forced to keep drunks supplied with beer and siblings with clean underwear -instead of...
MILAN KUNDERA
I had all kinds of answers ready for the commissions that called me in and asked me what had made me...
MILAN KUNDERA
Too much faith is the worst ally. When you believe in something literally, through your faith you'll...
MILAN KUNDERA
I know, brother, that you are a straightforward man, and that you pride yourself on it. But put one ...
MILAN KUNDERA
Certainty. Life's last and kindest gift.
MILAN KUNDERA
Sometimes you make up your mind about something without knowing why, and your decision persists by t...
MILAN KUNDERA
Kitsch is the inability to admit that shit exists
MILAN KUNDERA
Yes, it's crazy. Love is either crazy or it's nothing at all.
MILAN KUNDERA
To laugh is to live profoundly.
MILAN KUNDERA
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting
MILAN KUNDERA
The worst thing is not that the world is unfree, but that people have unlearned their liberty.
...
MILAN KUNDERA