What I love in a woman is not what she is in and for herself, but the side of herself she turns towards me, what she is for me. I love her as character in our common love story. what wuld Hamlet be without the castle at Elsinore, without Ophelia, without all the concrete situations he goes through, what would he be without the text of his part? What would be left but an empty, dumb, illusory essence?
Milan Kundera
Related It seemed to me an error in reasoning for a man to isolate a woman he loves from all the circumstanc... MILAN KUNDERA When you add love to sex, it feels as if your soul is being drawn from the chains of gravity into th... CHLOE THURLOW Love? I always thought love was just something that ate away your sanity, left you with an inferiori... TOMOKO HAYAKAWA Ques eso? Queso? NOLAN J. VANDER HAAGEN How do you know if something is real? That’s easy. Does it change you? Does it form you? Does it g... C. JOYBELL C. Men and women are made for each other, but their mutual dependence differs in degrees; man is depend... JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU Women think they can act like evil monsters from hell and be loved like a princess. It's as if the d... ROBIN SACREDFIRE Every time a woman makes herself laugh at her husband's often-told jokes she betrays him. The man wh... GERMAINE GREER Every time a woman makes herself laugh at her husband's often-told jokes she betrays him. The man wh... GERMAINE GREER Love is insanity, apparently. COREY ANN HAYDU Love, real love, the kind that you fall in, isn’t like Corinthians. The “suffereth long” and �... JULIE ANNE LONG Love without reason is fleeting; love without emotion, dry. J.R. MORALES When push comes to shove would people do what they felt was right, to get justice done or would they... GARY F EVANS... I love her for what she has dared to be, for her hardness, her cruelty, her egoism, her perverseness... ANAïS NIN Wanting something badly even though it could hurt you," Bentley repeated. He looked up at the ceilin... NELLIE CHRISTINE But in the end, back she comes. There's no use resisting. She goes to him for amnesia, for oblivion.... MARGARET ATWOOD The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense. JIM HARRISON She deserves so much better than what I can give her. I don’t, however, think she deserves better ... COLLEEN HOOVER There’s a reason for the word heartbeat not be called beat of heart. The perfect woman only needs ... ROBIN SACREDFIRE So many people look up to Jennifer Lawrence playing Katniss in 'The Hunger Games.' For them ... DAISY RIDLEY Each of us views life through a different lens. What we think is colored by the baggage we carry, an... LAURIE BUCHANAN, PHD The opportunity to decieve others is ever present and often tempting, and each instance of deception... SAM HARRIS Do what is best for you; it will be the best for the world. DEBASISH MRIDHA What is it that love does to a woman? Without she only sleeps; with it alone, she lives. OVID Empathy is the new measurement of everything. It doesn't matter what religion you have, what God you... C. JOYBELL C. Real love is feeling so loved and so secure that even your name feels safe in his mouth. CJ HECK I do not mourn the loss of my sister because she will always be with me, in my heart," she says. "I ... ERIN MORGENSTERN She buys "mixed salad greens" for seven dollars a bag, triple-washed with who knows what. And to get... RUDOLPH DELSON How do you love your children? By doing what's best for them. Then how would you love your... J. GRANT HOWARD Grandmam, as I have seen in looking back, was the decider of my fate. She shaped my life, without of... WENDELL BERRY What matters is the one thing I do know for certain: God is with me. CRAIG GROESCHEL Stand for something. Make your life mean something. Start where you are with what you have. You are ... GERMANY KENT He who gives what he would as readily throw away, gives without generosity; for the essence of gener... SIR HENRY TAYLOR He who gives what he would as readily throw away, gives without generosity; for the essence of gener... HENRY TAYLOR Yes, somewhere inside me there is a child always eleven years old, a girlchild who holds the world r... DOROTHY ALLISON Hades, Hera, and Hestia!" Flynn curses, pointing up. "What in the Underworld is that?" "A ... AMANDA BOUCHET I Don't Like What I Do, I Love What I Do! JOHN PETERS That's the good thing about it. Nothing counts except what's goin' on around you. H.L. DAVIS What counts, in the long run, is not what you read; it is what you sift through your own mind; it is... ELEANOR ROOSEVELT This was our house. Mine and hers. I know she’d sneak over to the rectory every once in a while an... TIFFANY REISZ She knew this man's smile, his gentle ways of love, but not his godlike fury in the storm. She might... ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPéRY George stared at the dove. What would she say if she could speak to him? What would she wish for, fo... METTE IVIE HARRISON When she had thus for a while struck the flint on her heart without getting a spark, incapable, more... GUSTAVE FLAUBERT We all are wearing many hundred glasses of different colors. Therefore, everyone sees the world in d... MUDITHA CHAMPIKA In domestic life, the woman's value is inherent, unquantifiable; at home she exchanges proven va... RACHEL CUSK Love. What is it truly? Love is a spiritual state, an intangible, often insatiable need to put one's... BELLA VESPIRA What is love? It's not empathy, nor kindness. Empathy takes two, the one who hurts and the... NIKOS KAZANTZAKIS What's so lovely about Wonder Woman is yes, she has the strength and power of a goddess, but she... GAL GADOT I watched my mother do what she did best, and realized there would never be a way to cut myself from... SARAH DESSEN She walked away without bothering to look further. She knew he’d be fine. Her specialty was subdui... FRANCINE PASCAL The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope. HENRY WARD BEECHER And what would humans be without love?" RARE, said Death. TERRY PRATCHETT How was it that he haunted her imagination so persistently? What could it be? Why did she care for w... ELIZABETH GASKELL Szerzetesek, vannak tanulatlan, közönséges emberek, akik nem gondolnak a nemes dolgokkal, nem hal... GAUTAMA BUDDHA És Brahmá, a Teremtő, felső ruháját fél vállán átvetve, összetett kézzel meghajolt a Mag... GAUTAMA BUDDHA We may live without poetry, music and art;
We may live without conscience, and live without heart;... LORD LYTTON (EDWARD ROBERT BULWER LYTTON) ("OWEN MEREDITH") Her blue eyes were still beautiful, but they did not know what was before them, and Mary herself cou... LAURA INGALLS WILDER At the beginning love is a fact, at the end it's a theory BANGAMBIKI HABYARIMANA Romantic love, I think, requires a degree of physical attraction, but devotion is needed to maintain... ANGELA N. BLOUNT It is the lies he's telling her - as he has been, Nassun understands suddenly, her whole life - that... N.K. JEMISIN I love being on camera. And I love knowing what's going on in the world. Diane Sawyer is my favo... CARRIE UNDERWOOD If your job is to kill us, why didn’t you kill me?” I ask. He answers without hesitating, a... RICK YANCEY The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible s... WILFRID SELLARS FOOTBALL IS A DECISION GAME BASED ON QUICK THINKING IN RELATION TO WHAT IS HAPPENING AROUND YOU AND ... LERCHE NJANG What is light without dark? Right without left? What is goodness without the option to be evil? HARRISON CHRISTIAN Nothing is more private than a woman's body; it is her physical, emotional, and moral citadel. S... LEWIS B. SMEDES She wondered whether there would ever come an hour in her life when she didn't think of him -- didn'... PHILIP PULLMAN In metros, girls are very independent, conscious and aware. But in the interiors of our country, whe... KANGANA RANAUT Do you think you might be able to love me someday?" He asked and heard her laugh softly. ... JASMINE DUBROFF We are faithful as long as we love, but you demand faithfulness of a woman without love, and th... LEOPOLD VON SACHER-MASOCH Love does not depend on circumstance - it is a decision, not a feeling. J.R. MORALES Contrary to popular belief, love is not found. It is achieved. J.R. MORALES I have something for you.” “Yeah? What? Is it shiny?” They both waited until Indigo ... NALINI SINGH What Fucks me... is that we both are the same... we all walk on the same path... but everything is a... DEYTH BANGER First she starved herself of love, which meant also life; then of poetry in deference to what she th... VIRGINIA WOOLF He promised her that he would give her everything, everything she wanted, as men in love always do. ... PHILIPPA GREGORY I love you," he said, holding her close and running his fingers through her tangled hair as if he co... DEBORAH BLAKE I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait ... T.S. ELIOT I repeat, sir, that in whatever position you place a woman she is an ornament to society and a treas... MARK TWAIN Sometimes a woman is afraid to be without security or without certainty, for even a short time. She ... CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTéS What would an ocean be without a monster lurking in the dark? It would be like sleep without dreams. WERNER HERZOG Part of the allure of watching characters on-screen is to be able to put yourself in his or her shoe... ISSA RAE It is what it is, it is what you make it. JAMES DURBIN Human is what he decides to be. ZAMAN ALI My friends and family are my support system. They tell me what I need to hear, not what I want to he... KELLY CLARKSON Be encouraged. Hold your head up high and know God is in control and has a plan for you. Instead of ... GERMANY KENT Aimer, ça ne veut pas dire se ressembler. Aimer, ça ne veut pas dire être pareils, se conduire co... JUSTINE LéVY What is a hero without love for mankind. DORIS LESSING I have urged on woman independence of man, not that I do not think the sexes mutually needed by one ... MARGARET FULLER I want to meet a woman that will make me stop and listen to what she has to say. I want a woman who ... HENRY ROLLINS Without vanity, without coquetry, without curiosity, in a word, without the fall, woman would not be... VICTOR HUGO She was desperate and she was choosey at the same time and, in a way, beautiful, but she didn'... CHARLES BUKOWSKI You'll never get anywhere if you go about what-iffing like that. ROALD DAHL I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman wor... SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman wor... SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE Do what you love doing. JULIANNA MARGULIES She could feel the blood flowing within her and she felt that she must die or break forth into leave... MERVYN PEAKE I said to my soul be still, and wait without hope; for hope would be hope of the wrong thing; wait w... T.S. ELIOT ...the mind is conscious, but conscious of nothing - I said to my soul, be still, and wait without h... T.S. ELIOT She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a ... LILY KING
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