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Books Quotes by Milan Kundera

56 Books quotes by Milan Kundera

All Books quotes Milan Kundera’s page

A novel that erases memory by destroying books highlights how stories protect a people’s history. Kundera’s quotes say that characters are unrealized possibilities and that moral judgment is suspended in fiction. They also note that great novels explore the mystery of the self.

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“Adventure, the first great theme of the novel.”

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“By writing books, a man turns into a universe.”

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The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question,

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Is a novel anything but a trap set for a hero?

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The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters.

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But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?

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In Tereza's eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood

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

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“She loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It differentiated her from the others”

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The novel is a territory where one does not make assertions; it is a territory of play and of hypotheses.

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she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an…

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“The novel's spirit is the spirit of complexity. . . . The novel's spirit is the spirity of continuity . . .…

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The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a…

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A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.

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The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history.

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

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“It is wrong, then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences (like the meeting of Anna, Vronsky, the railway…

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“In any case, it seems to me that all over the world people nowadays prefer to judge rather than to understand, to…

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“A novel is purposely a-philosophic, even anti-philosophic, fiercely independent of any system of preconceived ideas, it questions, it marvels, it doesn't judge,…

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The great European novel started out as entertainment, and every true novelist is nostalgic for it. In fact, the themes of those…

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In order to make the novel into a polyhistorical illumination of existence, you need to master the technique of ellipsis, the art…

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The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody…

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I remember that the day I finished 'The Angels,' part three of 'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting', I was terribly proud…

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The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and…

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Graphomania (a mania for writing books) inevitably takes on epidemic proportions when a society develops to the point of creating three basic…

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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…

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“The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally…

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“The novel was born with the Modern Era, which made man, to quote Heidegger, the "only real subject," the ground for everything.…

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The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for…

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“A novel does not assert anything, a novel poses questions... The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. When…

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“The novel has accompanied man uninterruptedly and faithfully since the beginning of the Modern Era. It was then that the "passion to…

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Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. The morality that stands against the ineradicable human…

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“Early in the novel that Tereza clutched under her arm when she went to visit Tomas, Anna meets Vronsky in curious circumstances:…

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“As I have pointed out before, characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence,…

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“Let us define our terms. A woman who writes her lover four letters a day is not a graphomaniac, she is simply…

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“From childhood, she had regarded books as the emblems of a secret brotherhood.”

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Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality.

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All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.

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She regarded books as the emblems of secret brotherhood. A man with this sort of library couldn't possibly hurt her.

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No one can get really drunk on a novel or a painting, but who can help getting drunk on Reethoven's Ninth, Rartok's…

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More by Milan Kundera

“The future is only an indifferent void no one cares about, but the past is filled with life, and its countenance is irritating, repellent,…

“From that time on they both looked forward to sleeping together. I might even say that the goal of their lovemaking was not so…

“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…

The beauty of New York is unintentional; it arose independent of human design, like a stalagmite cavern.

Children, Never look Back!" and this meant that we must never allow the future to be weighed down by memory . for children have…

“Our lives may be separate, but they run in the same direction, like parallel lines.”

“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…

Love is a battle," said Marie-Claude, still smiling. "And I plan to go on fighting. To the end." Love is a battle?" said Franz.…

“He remained annoyed with himself until he realized that not knowing what he wanted was actually quite natural. We can never know what to…

“Whenever I think about ancient cultures nostalgia seizes me. Perhaps this is nothing but envy of the sweet slowness of the history of that…

When we ignore the body, we are more easily victimized by it.

“Do stories, apart from happening, being, have something to say? For all my skepticism, some trace of irrational superstition did survive in me, the…

“Os extremos delimitam a fronteira para além da qual a vida termina, e a paixão pelo extremismo, tanto em arte como em política, é…

The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by…

Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo.