In any case, it seems to me that all over the world people nowadays prefer to judge rather than to understand, to answer rather than to ask, so that the voice of the novel can hardly be heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties.


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

i know im not the girl you wanted. not the one you want to hear from. but what you see is what you g...
SIMI GREWAL
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
Friendship is a double-edged sword one side it can be great and true but the other side it spells be...
GARY F EVANS...
Congratulations, to the people which made gotham series, still need some more and extra work!
DEYTH BANGER
How should I know?" said Alice, surprised at her own courage. "It's no business of mine."
The Q...
LEWIS CARROLL
Kindness is universal. Sometimes being kind allows others to see the goodness in humanity through yo...
GERMANY KENT
Food Allergies Are Not Due to Food, Rather Are Due to the Constant Contamination of That Food That Y...
THEHEALTHFOODGURU
Be kind. We never know what people are going through. Give grace and mercy because one day your circ...
GERMANY KENT
To have the cognitive abilities to do research and development is vital to a forever expanding world...
GARY F EVANS...
The first and foremost human right or fundamental right is the right to exist.
APURVA GAGLANI
If we ever put research into what the subconscious is we could probably come to the conclusion that ...
GARY F EVANS...
The unfortunate thing is that, sometimes, we slip, but, fortunately, consciously or unconsciously, w...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
The market is still waiting for HSBC results, which will have a big impact on the direction of the m...
ANDREW TO
Property shares had a technical rebound, but interest rate concerns will still affect properties unt...
ANDREW TO
Bank of China's results were quite good; double-digit growth can be taken as good results for a bank...
ANDREW TO
The index tried to challenge 18,000 but failed, so that triggered profit taking. Tokyo's slide also ...
ANDREW TO
Trading seems to be focusing on selective counters because investors are cautious amid interest rate...
ANDREW TO
We're seeing a minor technical rebound after Wall Street rebounded from two days of losses. The key ...
ANDREW TO
Some investors have returned to pick up the stock at bargain prices.
ANDREW TO
I think the take-up for the placement is not too good and other property developers may be discourag...
ANDREW TO
We are afraid that our freedoms and liberties will be infringed in the future.
ANDREW TO
I think there was some minor selling pressure on telecom stocks as the market continued to see a wea...
ANDREW TO
Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it?...
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
The saying sell all your belongings & give to the poor simply means "Redirect your mind to the verit...
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN)
Life can only be understood looking backward. It must be lived forward.
ERIC ROTH
You're afraid of getting hurt like I'm afraid to die. It doesn't mean I'm not going to live every da...
VI KEELAND
Wesley Rush doesn't chase girls, but I'm chasing you.
KODY KEPLINGER
I turn and kick with the first one and feel myself being lifted and thrown towards the beach. It's l...
MARK SMITH
What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough ...
DOUGLAS ADAMS
One of the things Ford Prefect had always found hardest to understand about humans was their habit o...
DOUGLAS ADAMS
Judge not lest ye be judged.
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MATTHEW
Time determines the occurrence of possibilities and impossibilities, but God determines the time for...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
May I never neither turn left nor turn right in my journey of life, but may I go straight to Christ ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
I don't spend a lot of time asking "WHY?" Instead I focus on what I should do now or how I should re...
JEFF DIXON-THE KEY TO THE KINGDOM
I hate that just because you happen to be good at something,people automatically think that's what m...
AMBER SMITH
- Mrzim sve što je odricanje!
- Ni ja, Ivane, ne pristajem da se odričem. Ja hoću ceo, sav, ...
DOBRICA ĆOSIć
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This had made many people very angry and has been wi...
DOUGLAS ADAMS
There was a terribly ghastly silence.
There was a terribly ghastly noise.
There was a terr...
DOUGLAS ADAMS
To make one mistake, and then fix it. It shows, a sign that you have understood
the lesson.
DEYTH BANGER
She was restless. She drove a little too fast, swam a little too far offshore. She hitchhiked. She s...
ELIZABETH WINDER
Boring people live boring lives.
HABEEB AKANDE
Can I buy you a drink when you get off?"

"I don't drink. Alcohol is bad for my legs."
ERIC JEROME DICKEY
He'd never forget what Naasir had said to him when Dmitri yelled that he didn't intend to bury anoth...
NALINI SINGH
Seeking survival, hostile, hidden from sight,
Deliciously flavoured - juicy, sweet bite,
E...
CLAUDIA BAKKER
He muttered something foul and then climbed the stairs, rapping twice on Timmie’s door.
“Ri...
JEANIENE FROST
I think that many people will intentionally overlook all of the lifeless facts about their relations...
C. JOYBELL C.
Each day I will accomplish one thing on my to do list.
LAILAH GIFTY AKITA
It doesn't take an army to change the world, or an average-sized militia group, either. All it takes...
MIKE KLEPPER
Anything that is exclusive will be accused of elitism; living one’s dreams will be called pretenti...
FENNEL HUDSON
Wake every morning with the same feeling. Live up high and fly on top of the ceiling. I just know th...
ANA CLAUDIA ANTUNES
Creativity is not just thinking outside the box but living outside it.
VICTOR SHAMAS
To be or not to be that is the question.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage chang...
LEON C. MEGGINSON
To question reason is to trust it.
MITCH STOKES
What if you are wrong? What if the gods sent you, and indeed the rest of us, not because we were nev...
MARIE LU
To be, or not to be, that is the question.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Not everyone has the time to be normal.
LJUPKA CVETANOVA
It's a a damn good day to be alive.
MICHAEL CLIFFORD
The sad heart needs work to do.
JOAN BAUER
Most powerful of all powers in its holy insinuation is _being_. _To be_ is more powerful than even _...
GEORGE MACDONALD
Another year is ending, but something is pending
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
The earth is an arena of champions. We are all champions. We all did overcome millions of potential ...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
One must simply take the days of their lives as they happen. If you spend time worrying over what is...
R.J. GONZALES
I live my life progressing for nothing else but the best.
JONATHAN ANTHONY BURKETT
Dare to seize and make the most of all opportunities that life bring to your path.
LAILAH GIFTY AKITA
Entrepreneur, you're either raising the bar of excellence or, you're exhaling at the bar which is ex...
ONYI ANYADO
Don't tell me you're one of those people who becomes their disease. I know so many people like that....
JOHN GREEN
Marvin was humming ironically because he hated humans so much.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizab...
DOUGLAS ADAMS
God's Final Message to His Creation:
'We apologize for the inconvenience.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
Everyone always says how I'm so smart, but they don't know what it's like being me. always feeling l...
SUSANE COLASANTI
Everything we do really is just a little marker on the long road to death. And sometimes that’s ov...
JOSS WHEDON
Being clingy may work for puppies, but not for you.
OSCAR AULIQ-ICE
He created us for adventure, not ease.
MARY E. DEMUTH
You learned right away that applause sounds like love.
AVA DELLAIRA
...we live on the edge of the abstract all the time. Look at something solid in the known world: an ...
NATALIE GOLDBERG
This Arthur Dent," comes the cry from the furthest reaches of the galaxy, and has even now been foun...
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The shoes always tell the story,' said the shoe poet.
'Not always,' I countered.
'Yes, alw...
RUTA SEPETYS
Sylvia possessed a deeply conditioned respect for authority. She wanted desperately to live up to th...
ELIZABETH WINDER
Don't let fear cripple you and keep you from trying new things, changing things, exploring and livin...
AKIROQ BROST
Good acting should teach people to understand rather than judge.
PETER FINCH
Now is everything
Now is the essence
Now is the focus
Focus on the now
For that ...
KAREN HACKEL
Some minds are like concrete: thoroughly mixed up and permanently set.
ATTRIBUTED TO THE REV. DENNY BRAKE
Promise me you'll always remember that you're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and s...
CRISTOPHER ROBIN TO WINNIE THE POOH
We're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive. It's pretty dense kid...
KURT VONNEGUT
until we do what has not yet been done, what has not been done shall remain undone
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
To be or not to be. That's not really a question.
JEAN-LUC GODARD
Always look to understand rather than to judge.
AARON SANTOS
The great risk of living is that we might not survive it.
J. ALEKSANDR WOOTTON
Clay in the hands of a good potter suffers so many good turns, but in the end, we see its real and t...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
Smiling at death seems like a pretty bold act. And so I smile like a damned fool.
EMM COLE
We need to embrace every day and enjoy it as much as we can.
KAREN TODD SCARPULLA
Remember that yours is not the only heart that may be wishing for love.
CAMERON DOKEY
The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes fr...
MILAN KUNDERA
In the journey of life, certain paths may seem to be leading nowhere because of a mountain or hill o...
ERNEST AGYEMANG YEBOAH
Human is what he decides to be.
ZAMAN ALI
Beauty fades, but knowledge is eternal
ANDREW FAIRCHILD
To be rich simply means,to be able to meet people's need.
DAVID ATTA (A.K.A DAVIED ATTLARS & MR DAIN)
when your heart touched mine,I knew then we were one.
THERESA M WILSON

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
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
There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age ...
MILAN KUNDERA