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Novel Quotes by Milan Kundera
- There are metaphysical problems, problems of human existence, that philosophy has never known how to grasp in all their concreteness and that only the novel…
- The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them.…
- The novel is a territory where one does not make assertions; it is a territory of play and of hypotheses.
- No one can get really drunk on a novel or a painting, but who can help getting drunk on Reethoven's Ninth, Rartok's Sonata for Two…
- The present era grabs everything that was ever written in order to transform it into films, TV programs; or cartoons. What is essential in a…
- A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.
- The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.
- All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.
- The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists'…
- The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on…
- it is wrong to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences... but it is right to chide man for being blind to such…
- The novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become
- All novels . . . are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are…
- [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…
- The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything....The novelist teaches…
- The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them.…
- Great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors.
- Is a novel anything but a trap set for a hero?
- The novel is a meditation on existence as seen through the medium of imaginary characters.
- In Tereza’s eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood. For she had but a single weapon against the world of crudity surrounding her:…
More Novel Quotes
- I started out in life as a poet; I was only writing poetry all through my 20s. It wasn't until I was… — Paul Auster
- Nothing (at least that can be done by humans) immortalizes anyone. The Fault in Our Stars will hopefully have a long and… — John Green
- Once a novel gets going and I know it is viable, I don't then worry about plot or themes. These things will… — Chinua Achebe
- I don't think the relationship between novels and realities are one to one. Of course novels play different roles. It's essentially just… — Margaret Atwood
- I was once a graduate student in Victorian literature, and I believe as the Victorian novelists did, that a novel isn't simply… — Margaret Atwood
- There's no lack of writers writing novels in America, about America. Therefore, it seems to me it would be wasteful for me… — Chinua Achebe
- Hemingway is terribly limited. His technique is good for short stories, for people who meet once in a bar very late at… — Wystan Hugh Auden
- The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid. — Jane Austen