Quotes from Milan Kundera

Before long, unfortunately, she began to be jealous herself, and Tomas saw her jealousy not as a Nobel Prize, but as a burden, a burden he would be saddled with until not long before his death.

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. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. It is that crossed border which attracts me most. For beyond that border begins the secret the novel asks about.

It's a vicious circle, people are going deaf because music is played louder and louder. But because they're going deaf it has to be played louder still.

to be absolutely modern means: never to question the content of modernity and to serve it as one serves the absolute, that is, without hesitation.

mother] belonged to a realm of other creatures: smaller, lighter, more easily blown away.

Let the planet be convulsed with exploding bombs.

He had spent seven years of his life with Tereza, and now he realized that those years were more attractive in retrospect than they were when he was living them.

Isn't that exactly the definition of biography? An artificial logic imposed on an 'incoherent succession of images'?

By stablishing an acquaintance with Lucie, I too had set my destiny in motion; but I did not lose sight of it. Though we didn't meet very often, at least our mettings were fairly regular, and I knew she was capable of waiting several weeks and then greeting me as if we'd seen each other the day before

the sadness meant: we are at the last station. The happiness meant: we are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content

perhaps all the questions we ask for love, to measure, test, prob, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short. 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 of delivering ourselves up to him demand-free and asking for nothing but his company

The physical contact with people who struck and trampled and killed one another seemed far worse to him than a solitary death in the purity of the waters.

She was amazed at the number of years she had spent pursuing one lost moment.

The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful.

I bambini sono senza passato ed è questo tutto il mistero dell'innocenza magica del loro sorriso...

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 fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us. Sabina was unaware of the goal that lay behind her longing to betray. The unbearable lightness of being —was that the goal?

She now knew there were conditions under which she could feel strong and fulfilled, and she longed to go off into the world and seek those conditions somewhere else.

People fascinated by the idea of progress never suspect that every step forward is also a step on the way to the end and that behind all the joyous 'onward and upward' slogans lurks the lascivious voice of death urging us to make haste.

What remains of Beethoven? A frown, an improbable mane, and a somber voice intoning Es muss seine! ….And so n and so forth. Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into Kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.

Misery and pride. 'On horseback, death and a peacock'.

She refused at first, saying it would make a mockery of their love. She loved him too much to admit that what she thought of as unforgettable could ever be forgotten. Finally, of course, she did as he asked, but without enthusiasm. The notebooks showed it: they had many empty pages, and the entries were fragmentary.

Nunca se pode saber o que se deve querer, pois só se tem uma vida e não se pode nem compará-la com as vidas anteriores nem corrigi-la nas vidas posteriores.

Promatra njihova usta koja se otvaraju sva istodobno, usta koja melju, izbacuju rije?i i bez prestanka praskaju u smijeh (zagonetka: kako se žene koje se me?usobno ne slušaju mogu smijati onome što govore?).

You seem to be turning into the theme of all my paint­ings", she said. "The meeting of two worlds. A double exposure. Showing through the outline of Tomas the libertine, incredibly, the face of a romantic lover. Or, the other way, through a Tristan, always thinking of his Tereza, I see the beautiful, betrayed world of the libertine.