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
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... 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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... 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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