Unbearable lightness of being Quotes by Milan Kundera

Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor

— Milan Kundera

“Metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with.”

— Milan Kundera

Kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence

— Milan Kundera

In the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable.

— Milan Kundera

“Anyone who starts doubting details will end by doubting life itself.”

— Milan Kundera

“Let the planet be convulsed with exploding bombs.”

— Milan Kundera

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

— Milan Kundera

The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.

— Milan Kundera

Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the…

— Milan Kundera

There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, pain…

— Milan Kundera

People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no…

— Milan Kundera

Dreaming is not merely an act of communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that…

— Milan Kundera

“He who gives himself up like a prisoner of war must give up his weapons as well. And deprived in advance of…

— Milan Kundera

The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything…

— Milan Kundera

The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches…

— Milan Kundera

When we want to give expression to a dramatic situation in our lives, we tend to use metaphors of heaviness. We say…

— Milan Kundera

The heaviest of burdens is simultaneously an image of life's most intense fullfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come…

— Milan Kundera

In the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.

— Milan Kundera

In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.

— Milan Kundera

We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold.

— Milan Kundera