The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters. — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
The novel is a territory where one does not make assertions; it is a territory of play and of hypotheses. — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
The great European novel started out as entertainment, and every true novelist is nostalgic for it. In fact, the themes of those… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
No one can get really drunk on a novel or a painting, but who can help getting drunk on Reethoven's Ninth, Rartok's… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality. — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
The novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
“For it is clear immediately: human life as such is a defeat. All we can do in the face of that ineluctable… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. The morality that stands against the ineradicable human… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
In order to make the novel into a polyhistorical illumination of existence, you need to master the technique of ellipsis, the art… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
All novels . . . are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
“When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
[Kafka] transformed the profoundly antipoetic material of a highly bureaucratized society into the great poetry of the novel; he transformed a very… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
“A novel does not assert anything, a novel poses questions... The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. When… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
In Tereza’s eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood. For she had but a single weapon against the world of… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
The present era grabs everything that was ever written in order to transform it into films, TV programs; or cartoons. What is… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
“Who was the real me? I can only repeat: I was a man of many faces. At meetings I was earnest, enthusiastic,… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
it is wrong to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences... but it is right to chide man for being… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
“The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. that is why I am equally fond of them all and equally… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
Great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors. — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
There are metaphysical problems, problems of human existence, that philosophy has never known how to grasp in all their concreteness and that… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
“The sense of modernism is often seen in the determination of each of the arts to come as close as possible to… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
“A novel examines not reality but existence. And existence is not what has occurred, existence is the realm of human possibilities, everything… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
“The future is only an indifferent void no one cares about, but the past is filled with life, and its countenance is irritating, repellent,… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
“From that time on they both looked forward to sleeping together. I might even say that the goal of their lovemaking was not so… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
“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… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
The beauty of New York is unintentional; it arose independent of human design, like a stalagmite cavern. — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
Children, Never look Back!" and this meant that we must never allow the future to be weighed down by memory . for children have… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
“Our lives may be separate, but they run in the same direction, like parallel lines.” — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
“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… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
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.… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
“He remained annoyed with himself until he realized that not knowing what he wanted was actually quite natural. We can never know what to… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
“Whenever I think about ancient cultures nostalgia seizes me. Perhaps this is nothing but envy of the sweet slowness of the history of that… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
“Do stories, apart from happening, being, have something to say? For all my skepticism, some trace of irrational superstition did survive in me, the… — Milan Kundera Copy Share Image
![“[Kafka] transformed the profoundly antipoetic material of a highly bureaucratized society into the great poetry of the novel; he transformed a very ordinary story of a man who cannot obtain a promised job . . . into myth, into epic, into a kind of beauty never before seen.” quote by Milan Kundera](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/6b8/milan-kundera-120_beauty_kafka-transformed-the-profoundly-antipoe_2458536.jpg)
