Milan Kundera Quotes

384 quotes in 4625 categories

• The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after…
• There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning,…
• And therein lies the whole of man's plight. Human time does not turn in a circle; it runs ahead in a straight line. That is…
• The irresistible proliferation of graphomania shows me that everyone without exception bears a potential writer within him, so that the entire human species has good…
• Solitude: a sweet absence of looks.
• Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is not forbidden by law in their case; animals…
• This was exactly what the girl had most dreaded all her life and had scrupulously avoided until now: lovemaking without emotion or love. She knew…
• 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.…
• Einmal ist keinmal, says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we…
• Tereza's mother never stopped reminding her that being a mother meant sacrificing everything. Her words had the ring of truth, backed as they were by…
• To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it.
• Physical love is unthinkable without violence.
• We all reject out of hand the idea that the love of our life may be something light or weightless; we presume our love is…
• I want you to be weak. As weak as I am.
• But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.
• 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…
• For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves nor to others, was possible only away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye…
• People derived too much pleasure from seeing their fellow man morally humiliated to spoil that pleasure by hearing out an explanation.
• But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?
• Tereza had gone back to sleep; he could not. He pictured her death. She was dead and having terrible nightmares; but because she was dead,…

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