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cca77d8
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That is when I understood the magical meaning of the circle. If you go away from a row, you can still come back into it. A row is an open formation. But a circle closes up, and if you go away from it, there is no way back. It is not by chance that the planets move in circles and that a rock coming loose from one of them goes inexorably away, carried off by centrifugal force. Like a meteorite broken off from a planet, I left the circle and h..
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Milan Kundera |
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816a3af
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Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).
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Milan Kundera |
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7115f26
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Optimism is the opium of the people.
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Milan Kundera |
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6b95000
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If I had two lives, in one life I could invite her to stay at my place, and in the second life I could kick her out. Then I could compare and see which had been the best thing to do. But we only live once. Life's so light. Like an outline we can't ever fill in or correct... make any better. It's frightening"."
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Milan Kundera |
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d3b26be
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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.
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Milan Kundera |
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2d60aef
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He looked at her and tried to discover behind her lascivious expression the familiar features that he loved tenderly. It was as if he were looking at two images through the same lens, at two images superimposed one on the other with one showing through the other. These two images showing through each other were telling him that was in the girl, that her soul was terrifyingly amorphous, that it held faithfulness and unfaithfulness, treache..
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sex
relationships
women
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Milan Kundera |
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69a7e93
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Beauty in the European sense has always had a premeditated quality to it. We've always had an aesthetic intention and a long-range plan. That's what enabled western man to spend decades building a Gothic cathedral or a Renaissance piazza. The beauty of New York rests on a completely different base. It's unintentional. It arose independent of human designt, like a stalagmitic cavern. Forms which in themselves quite ugly turn up fortuitously,..
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Milan Kundera |
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aadd7ea
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People derived too much pleasure from seeing their fellow man morally humiliated to spoil that pleasure by hearing out an explanation.
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Milan Kundera |
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8ef8768
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The river flowed from century to century, and human affairs play themselves out on its banks. Play themselves out to be forgotten the next day, while the river flows on.
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Milan Kundera |
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4a4b467
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For he was aware of the great secret of life: Women don't look for handsome men. Women look for men who have had beautiful women. Having an ugly mistress is therefore a fatal mistake.
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women
relationship
love
mistress
ugly
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Milan Kundera |
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0f67d4a
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The phrase "It's absolutely the same with me, I..." seems to be an approving echo, a way of continuing the other's thought, but that is an illusion: in reality it is a brute revolt against a brutal violence, an effort to free our own ear from bondage and to occupy the enemy's ear by force. Because all of man's life among his kind is nothing other than a battle to seize the ear of others."
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Milan Kundera |
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cb8b17b
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B]ut pain doesn't listen to reason, it has it's own reason, which is not reasonable.
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Milan Kundera |
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ac38d03
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Unlike the puerile loyalty to a conviction, loyalty to a friend is a virtue - perhaps the only virtue, the last remaining one.
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virtue
loyalty
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Milan Kundera |
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873d969
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lHb blt`ryf hw hdy@ Gyr mshrwT@, 'n tkwn mHbwban bdwn shtrT lhw lbrhn `l~ lHb lHqyqy. lw 'khbrtny mr'@: 'n 'Hbk l'nk dhky, l'nk ly'q, l'nk tbt` ly lhdy, l'nk l tlHq lns, l'nk tGsl l'Tbq.. Hynh s'kwn fy khyb@ 'ml, fhkdh Hb - fy lwq` - hw mshrw` mSlH@ dhty@. km hw 'kthr dq@ 'n nsm`: 'n mjnwn@ bk wlw lm tkn dhkyan 'w ly'qan, Ht~ wlw knt kdhban 'w mGrwran 'w mjrd lqyT!
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Milan Kundera |
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e30aecd
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Anyone who thinks that the Communist regimes of Central Europe are exclusively the work of criminals is overlooking a basic truth: The criminal regimes were made not by criminals but by enthusiasts convinced they had discovered the only road to paradise. They defended that road so valiantly that they were forced to execute many people. Later it became clear that there was no paradise, that the enthusiasts were therefore murderers.
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Milan Kundera |
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491f9be
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Draw a line; draw a line that pleases you. And remember that it is not the artist's role to copy the outlines of things but to create a world of his own lines on paper." (pp.28-29)"
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Milan Kundera |
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51ef357
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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.
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milan-kundera
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Milan Kundera |
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1d14718
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Noise has one advantage. It drowns out words. And suddenly he realized that all his life he had done nothing but talk, write, lecture, concoct sentences, search for formulations and amend them, so in the end no words were precise, their meanings were obliterated, their content lost, they turned into trash, chaff dust, sand; prowling through his brain, tearing at his head. they were his insomnia, his illness. And what he yearned for at that ..
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music
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Milan Kundera |
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5b2e6de
|
We are born one time only, we can never start a new life equipped with the experience we've gained from the previous one. We leave childhood without knowing what youth is, we marry without knowing what it is to be married, and even when we enter old age, we don't know what it is we're heading for: the old are innocent children innocent of thier old age. In that sense, man's world is the planet of inexperience.
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Milan Kundera |
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5bc3164
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We've known for a long time that it was no longer possible to overturn this world, nor reshape it, nor head off its dangerous headlong rush. There's been only one possible resistance: to not take it seriously.
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irony
lightness
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Milan Kundera |
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2587e54
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Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!
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Milan Kundera |
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705e524
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I think, therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.
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Milan Kundera |
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6653014
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People who shout joy from the rooftops are often the saddest of all.
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joy
sadness
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Milan Kundera |
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592efc9
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Tell me, where in life is there a value that would make us consider suicide uncalled for on principle! Love? Or friendship? I guarantee that friendship is not a bit less fickle than love and it is impossible to build anything on it. Self-love? I wish it were possible.
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suicide
love
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Milan Kundera |
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fe7a3d3
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Spontaneously, without any theological training, I, a child, grasped the incompatibility of God and shit and thus came to question the basic thesis of Christian anthropology, namely that man was created in God's image. Either/or: either man was created in God's image - and has intestines! - or God lacks intestines and man is not like him. The ancient Gnostics felt as I did at the age of five. In the second century, the Great Gnostic master ..
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shit
theology
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Milan Kundera |
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3fbcb30
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it is wrong to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences... but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life a dimension of beauty.
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Milan Kundera |
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c9c13e0
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Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.
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Milan Kundera |
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5836f29
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Es muss sein. Es muss sein.
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Milan Kundera |
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c3ea948
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The future is only an indifferent void no one cares about, but the past is filled with life, and its countenance is irritating, repellent, wounding, to the point that we want to destroy or repaint it. We want to be masters of the future only for the power to change the past.
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Milan Kundera |
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e84bf19
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Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's very beautiful. But what would they nourish their intimate talk with? However contemptible the world may be, they still need it to be able to talk together.' 'They could be silent.' 'Like those two, at the next table?' Jean Marc laughed. 'Oh, no, no love can survive muteness.
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Milan Kundera |
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598f3a0
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In Tereza's eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood. For she had but a single weapon against the world of crudity surrounding her: the novels. She had read any number of them, from Fielding to Thomas Mann. They not only offered the possibility of an imaginary escape from a life she found unsatisfying; they also had a meaning for her as physical objects: she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the sam..
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literature
reading
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Milan Kundera |
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ca50db0
|
Even at the age of eight she would fall asleep by pressing one hand into the other and making believe she was holding the hand of the man whom she loved, the man of her life. So if in her sleep she pressed Tomas hand with such tenacity, we can understand why: she had been training since childhood.
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Milan Kundera |
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74a6c9f
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If hatred strikes you, if you get accused, thrown to the lions, you can expect one of two reactions from people who know you: some of them will join in the kill, the others will discreetly pretend to know nothing, hear nothing, so you can go right on seeing them and talking to them. That second category, discreet and tactful, those are your friends. 'Friends' in the modern sense of the term. Listen, Jean-Marc, I've known that forever.
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Milan Kundera |
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4d9ff9e
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f~ qmws~ lkfr, thm@ klm@ wHd@ mqds@: lSdq@
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Milan Kundera |
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c9adb91
|
And I ran after that voice through the streets so as not to lose sight of the splendid wreath of bodies gliding over the city, and I realized with anguish in my heart that they were flying like birds and I was falling like a stone, that they had wings and I would never have any.
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Milan Kundera |
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2afb9c3
|
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.
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Milan Kundera |
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54e3449
|
I know, brother, that you are a straightforward man, and that you pride yourself on it. But put one question to yourself: in fact should one tell the truth? What obliges us to do it? And why do we consider telling the truth a virtue? Imagine that you meet a madman, who claims that he is a fish and that we are all fish. Are you going to argue with him? Are you going to undress in front of him and show him that you don't have fins? Are you ..
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virtue
lying
lies
truth
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Milan Kundera |
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c2640e3
|
The religion of orgasm: utilitarianism projected into sex life; efficiency versus indolence; coition reduced to an obstacle to be got past as quickly as possible in order to reach an ecstatic explosion, the only true goal of love-making and of the universe.
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sex
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Milan Kundera |
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54f8818
|
The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order.
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Milan Kundera |
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f382cbc
|
Youth is terrible: it is a stage trod by children in buskins and a variety of costumes mouthing speeches they've memorized and fanatically believe but only half understand. And history is terrible because it so often ends up a playground for the immature; a playground for the young Nero, a playground for the young Bonaparte, a playground for the easily roused mobs of children whose simulated passions and simplistic poses suddenly metamorpho..
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youth
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Milan Kundera |
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a1fb99e
|
Darling, my darling, don't think that I don't love you or that I didn't love you, but it's precisely because I love you that I couldn't have become what I am today if you were still here. It's impossible to have a child and despise the world as it is, because that's the world we've put the child into. The child makes us care about the world, think about it's future, willingly join in its racket and its turmoils, take its incurable stupidity..
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identity
kundera
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Milan Kundera |
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49613af
|
All novels . . . are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are automatically confronted by the question: what is the self? How can it be grasped?
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fiction
on-fiction
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Milan Kundera |
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96b58dd
|
A year or two after emigrating, she happened to be in Paris on the anniversary of the Russian invasion of her country. A protest march had been scheduled, and she felt driven to take part. Fists raised high, the young Frenchmen shouted out slogans condemning Soviet imperialism. She liked the slogans, but to her surprise she found herself unable to shout along with them. She lasted only a few minutes in the parade. When she told her French f..
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Milan Kundera |
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11d0201
|
Having a child is to show an absolute accord with mankind. If I have a child, it's as though I'm saying: I was born and have tasted life and declare it so good that is merits being duplicated.
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Milan Kundera |