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Milan Kundera Quotes - Page 11

All Quotes Adventure Age Ambition Art Attitude Beauty Betrayal Brotherhood Certainty Character Childhood Children Choices Coincidence Compassion Culture Darkness Desire Doubt Drama Evil Fashion Feelings Film Funny Giving Goodness Happiness Hatred Heart Home Hurt Imagination Immortality Inspirational Joy Judgment Laughter Life Love Lying Memories Metaphor Morality Morning Nostalgia Passion Past Pleasure Reality Running Sadness Sleep Soul Struggle Stupidity Suffering Today Understanding Violence War Water Writing

The young man called the waiter and paid. Then he got up and said to the girl: 'We're going.' Where to?' The girl feigned surprise. Don't ask, just come on,' said the young man. Is that any way to talk to me?' It's the

The young man called the waiter and paid. Then he got up and said to the girl: 'We're going.' Where to?' The girl feigned surprise. Don't ask, just come on,' said the young man. Is that any way to talk to me?' It's the way I talk to whores.

Girl, Men, Way

If I hadn't met you, I'd certainly have fallen in love with him.

Mets, Fallen, Ifs

He was well aware that of the two of three thousand times he had made love (how many times had he made love in his life?) only two or three were really essential and unforgettable. The rest were mere echoes, imitations, repetitions, or reminiscences.

Echoes, Two, Essentials

Yes, it was too late, and Sabina knew she would leave Paris, move on, and on again, because were she to die here they would cover her up with a stone, and in the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable.

Moving, Home, Paris

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

Men, Games, Naked

Milan Kundera (1974). “Laughable Loves”

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".

Light, Two, Compare

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?

Wine, Mean, Bottles

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.

Unseen, Want, Disappear

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

Historical, Criticism, Gestures

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.

Humility, Exaggeration Is, Together

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.

Life, Understanding, Age

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

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

Book, Knowing, Conviction

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

Intelligent, Littles, Novel

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.

Success, Fall, Voice

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.

Writing, Ambition, Creative

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.

Love, Dream, Memories

For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?

Novelists, Historic, Given

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.

Betrayal, Forever, Bed

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.

Fall, Sadness, Water

The novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become

Life, People, World

Perhaps the reason we are unable to love is that we yearn to be loved, that is, we demand something - love - from our partner instead of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company.

Love, Asking, Demand

"The Unbearable Lightness of Being". Book by Milan Kundera, 1984.

I want you to be weak. As weak as I am.

Want, Weak, I Want You

From tender youth we are told by father and teacher that betrayal is the most heinous offence imaginable. But what is betrayal?Betrayal means breaking ranks and breaking off into the unknown. Sabina knew of nothing more magnificent than going off into the unknown.

Teacher, Betrayal, Father

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.

Passion, Together, Apathy

"Identity". Book by Milan Kundera, 1998.

Disgust at having to talk about oneself is what distinguishes novelistic talent from lyric talent.

Talent, Disgusting, Oneself

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