Milan Kundera Quotes - Page 10

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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".

Milan Kundera

Light, Two, Compare

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So she stood naked in front of the young man and at this moment stopped playing the game.

Milan Kundera

Men, Games, Naked

Milan Kundera (1974). “Laughable Loves”

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People are going deaf because music is played louder and louder, but because they're going deaf, it has to be played louder still.

Milan Kundera

Reality, People, Deaf

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When a private talk over a bottle of wine is broadcast on the radio, what can it mean but that the world is turning into a concentration camp?

Milan Kundera

Wine, Mean, Bottles

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For everyone is pained by the thought of disappearing, unheard and unseen, into an indifferent universe, and because of that everyone wants, while there is still time, to turn himself into a universe of words.

Milan Kundera

Unseen, Want, Disappear

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Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten.

Milan Kundera

Historical, Criticism, Gestures

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Mysticism and exaggeration go together. A mystic must not fear ridicule if he is to push all the way to the limits of humility or the limits of delight.

Milan Kundera

Humility, Exaggeration Is, Together

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we might also call vertigo the intoxication of the weak. aware of his weakness, a man decides to give in rather than stand up to it. he is drunk with weakness, wishes to grow even weaker, wishes to fall down in the middle of the main square in front of everybody, wishes to be down, lower than down.

Milan Kundera

Fall, Men, Squares

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Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding.

Milan Kundera

Life, Understanding, Age

"The Book of Laughter and Forgetting". Book by Milan Kundera, 1979.

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Fortunately, I read (the books) without knowing what I was in for, and the best thing that can ever happen to a reader happened to me: I loved something that, by conviction (or by my nature) I should not have loved

Milan Kundera

Book, Knowing, Conviction

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Yes, it's a well-known fact about you: you're like death, you take everything.

Milan Kundera

Relationship, Sex, Facts

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Great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors.

Milan Kundera

Intelligent, Littles, Novel

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The novelist's ambition is not to do something better than his predecessors but to see what they did not see, say what they did not say.

Milan Kundera

Writing, Ambition, Creative

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Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.

Milan Kundera

Success, Fall, Voice

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Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.

Milan Kundera

Love, Dream, Memories

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Oh lovers! be careful in those dangerous first days! once you've brought breakfast in bed you'll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal.

Milan Kundera

Betrayal, Forever, Bed

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Because beyond their practical function, all gestures have a meaning that exceeds the intention of those who make them; when people in bathing suits fling themselves into the water, it is joy itself that shows in the gesture, notwithstanding any sadness the divers may actually feel. When someone jumps into the water fully clothed, it is another thing entirely: the only person who jumps into the water fully clothed is a person trying to drown; and a person trying to drown does not dive headfirst; he lets himself fall: thus speaks the immemorial language of gestures.

Milan Kundera

Fall, Sadness, Water

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The senator had only one argument in his favour: his feeling. When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme.

Milan Kundera

Heart, Feelings, Mind

"Light but sound" by John Banville, www.theguardian.com. April 30, 2004.

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The border between good and evil is terribly fuzzy.

Milan Kundera

Evil, Borders, Fuzzy

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... characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about.

Milan Kundera

Character, Thinking, People

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A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.

Milan Kundera

Travel, Two, Space

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

Milan Kundera

Emotion, Sincerity, Pathos

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Today we're all alike, all of us bound together by our shared apathy toward work. That very apathy has become a passion. The one great collective passion of our time.

Milan Kundera

Passion, Together, Apathy

"Identity". Book by Milan Kundera, 1998.

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But what had happened, had happened, and it was no longer possible to right anything.

Milan Kundera

Happened

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What is unique about the "I" hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The individual "I" is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered.

Milan Kundera

Unique, People, Able

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Born: April 1, 1929
Occupation: Writer
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