Now time has a very different look; it is no longer the conquering present capturing the future; it is the present conquered and captured and carried off by the past.
Milan KunderaWe all reject out of hand the idea that the love of our life may be something light or weightless; we presume our love is what must be, that without it our life would no longer be the same; we feel that Beethoven himself, gloomy and awe-inspiring, is playing the โEs muss sein!โ to our own great love.
Milan KunderaThe important thing is to abide by the rule of threes. Either you see a woman three times in quick succession and then never again, or you maintain relations over the years but make sure that the rendezvous are at least three weeks apart.
Milan KunderaWhat does it mean to live in truth? Putting it negatively is easy enough: it means not lying, not hiding, and not dissimulating.
Milan KunderaAh, ladies and gentlemen, a man lives a sad life when he cannot take anything or anyone seriously.
Milan KunderaA gesture cannot be regarded as the expression of an individual, as his creation (because no individual is capable of creating a fully original gesture, belonging to nobody else), nor can it even be regarded as that person's instrument; on the contrary, it is gestures that use us as their instruments, as their bearers and incarnations
Milan KunderaDarling, my darling, don't think that I don't love you or that I didn't love you, but it's precisely because I love you that I couldn't have become what I am today if you were still here. It's impossible to have a child and despise the world as it is, because that's the world we've put the child into. The child makes us care about the world, think about it's future, willingly join in its racket and its turmoils, take its incurable stupidity seriously.
Milan KunderaThe characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. It is that crossed border (the border beyond which my own "I" ends) which attracts me most. For beyond that border begins the secret the novel asks about. This novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become.
Milan KunderaThe more vast the amount of time we've left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it.
Milan KunderaEven in the game there lurks a lack of freedom; even in a game is a trap for the players.
Milan KunderaTotalitarianism is neither left nor right, and within its empire both will perish. I was never a believer, but after seeing Czech Catholics persecuted during the Stalinist terror, I felt the deepest solidarity with them. What separated us, the belief in God, was secondary to what united us. In Prague, they hanged the Socialists and the priests. Thus a fraternity of the hanged was born.
Milan Kundera... characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about.
Milan KunderaTo ensure that the self doesn't shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends.
Milan KunderaMost people willingly deceive themselves with a doubly false faith; they believe in eternal memory (of men, things, deeds, peoples) and in rectification (of deeds, errors, sins, injustice). Both are sham. The truth lies at the opposite end of the scale: everything will be forgotten and nothing will be rectified. All rectification (both vengeance and forgiveness) will be taken over by oblivion.
Milan KunderaAny new possibility that existence acquires, even the least likely, transforms everything about existence.
Milan KunderaPerhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short.
Milan KunderaLooking out over the courtyard at the dirty walls, he realized he had no idea whether it was hysteria or love.
Milan KunderaYou can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.
Milan KunderaThe source of anxiety lies in the future. If you can keep the future out of mind, you can forget your worries.
Milan KunderaPeople fascinated by the idea of progress never suspect that every step forward is also a step on the way to the end.
Milan KunderaFor the body is temporal and thought is eternal and the shimmering essence of flame is an image of thought.
Milan KunderaCulture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity.
Milan KunderaBut when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.
Milan KunderaIt takes so little, so infinitely little, for a person to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love, convictions, faith, history. Human life -- and herein lies its secret -- takes place in the immediate proximity of that border, even in direct contact with it; it is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch.
Milan KunderaIn the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.
Milan KunderaFacts mean little compared to attitudes. To contradict rumor or sentiment is as futile as arguing against a believer's faith in the Immaculate Conception. You have simply become a victim of faith, Comrade Assistant.
Milan KunderaAll previous crimes of the Russian empire had been committed under the cover of a discreet shadow. The deportation of a million Lithuanians, the murder of hundreds of thousands of Poles, the liquidation of the Crimean Tatars remain in our memory, but no photographic documentation exists; sooner or later they will therefore be proclaimed as fabrications.
Milan KunderaAnd 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 why man cannot be happy: happiness is the longing for repetition.
Milan KunderaFor he was aware of the great secret of life: Women don't look for handsome men. Women look for men who have had beautiful women. Having an ugly mistress is therefore a fatal mistake.
Milan KunderaThe 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. Don't ask, just come on,' said the young man. Is that any way to talk to me?' It's the way I talk to whores.
Milan KunderaThe longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order.
Milan KunderaSensuality is the total mobilization of the senses: an individual observes his partner intently, straining to catch every sound.
Milan Kundera[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.
Milan KunderaIndeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious.
Milan KunderaBefore we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.
Milan KunderaHer kitsch was the image of home, all peace, quiet, and harmony, and ruled by a loving mother and a wise father. It was an image that took shape in her after the death of her parents. The less her life resembled the sweetest of dreams, the more sensitive she was to its magic, and more than once she shed tears when the ungrateful daughter in a sentimental film embraced the neglected father as the windows of the happy family's house shone out into the dying day.
Milan KunderaI am not in favor of imposing happiness on people. Everyone has a right to his bad wine, to his stupidity, and to his dirty fingernails.
Milan Kundera