Quotes from Milan Kundera

Humor: the divine flash that reveals the world in its moral ambiguity and man in his profound incompetence to judge others; humor: the intoxicating relativity of human things; the strange pleasure that conies of the certainty that there is no certainty. But humor, to recall Octavio Paz, is the great invention of the modern spirit. It has not been with us forever, and it won't be with us forever either. With a heavy heart, I imagine the day when Panurge no longer makes people laugh.

Zijn hele leven was hij bang haar te kwetsen. En alleen daarom onderwierp hij zich vrijwillig aan de discipline van een afstompende monogamie. Twintig jaar later blijkt opeens dat zijn bezorgdheid totaal overbodig is en dat hij tientallen vrouwen heeft gemist vanwege een misverstand!

In a society run by terror, no statements whatsoever can be taken seriously. They are all forced, and it is the duty of every honest man to ignore them.

The cemetery was vanity transmogrified into stone. Instead of growing more sensible in death, the inhabitants of the cemetery were sillier than they had been in life.

Consciousness of being loved separates a woman from the herd

She knew she was acting like the most vulgar of women, the kind that is out to cause pain and knows how.

The mediation of a woman is capable of imposing on hatred certain qualities characteristic of affection, for example curiosity, carnal interest, the urge to cross the threshold of intimacy.

It takes so little,so infinitely little, for someone to find himself on the other side of the boarder, where everything - love, conviction, faith, history - no longer has meaning. The whole mystery of human life resides in the fact that it is spent in the immediate proximity of, and even direct contact with, that boarder, that it is separated from it not by kilometers but by barely a millimeter.

whether they knew of didn't know is not the main issue; the main issue is whether a man is innocent because he didn't know. (...) by beating himself on the chest and proclaiming, My conscience is clear! I did not know! I was a believer! Isn't his I did not know I was a believer! at the very root of his irreparable guilt?

Because people who decline organized leisure activities are deserters from the great common struggle against boredom, and they deserve neither attention nor helmets.

Le degré de lenteur est directement proportionnel à l'intensité de la mémoire ; le degré de la vitesse est directement proportionnel à l'intensité de l'oubli.

the thought went through his mind that beauty is a spark which flares up when two ages meet across the distance of time, that beauty is a clean sweep of chronology, a rebellion against time.

SeçmediÄŸimiz bir ÅŸeye kendi erdemimiz ya da baÅŸar?s?zl???m?z gözüyle bakamay?z.

It is a tragicomic fact that our proper upbringing has become an ally of the secret police. (...) The Tell the truth! imperative drummed into us so automatically that we feel ashamed of lying even to a secret policeman.

Stvarna dobrota ?ovjeka može se pokazati u svoj svojoj ?isto?i i slobodi samo u odnosu prema nekome tko ne posjeduje nikakvu mo?. Pravi ispit ljudskog morala, onaj osnovni (iskren tako duboko da izmi?e našem pogledu) jest u odnosu ?ovjeka prema onima koji su mu prepušteni na milost i nemilost - prema životinjama. A baš je tu došlo do fundamentalnog debakla ?ovjeka, u toj mjeri elementarnog da su iz njega proizašli svi ostali.

El amor no se manifiesta en el deseo de acostarse con alguien (este deseo se produce en relación con una cantidad innumerable de mujeres), sino en el deseo de dormir junto a alguien (este deseo se produce en relación con una única mujer).

The individual I is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered.

O drama de uma vida pode sempre ser explicado pela metáfora do peso. Dizemos que temos um fardo sobre os ombros. Carregamos esse fardo, que suportamos ou não. Lutamos com ele, perdemos ou ganhamos. O que precisamente aconteceu com Sabina? nada. Deixara um homem porque quis deixá-lo. Ele a perseguira depois disso? Quis vingar-se? Não. Seu drama não era de peso, mais de leveza. O que se abatera sobre ela não era um fardo, mas a insustentável leveza do ser.

The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and other creatures. Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse.

If we have only one life to live,we might as well not have lived at all.

La honte n'a pas pour fondement une faute que nous aurions commise, mais l'humiliation que nous éprouvons à être ce que nous sommes sans l'avoir choisi, et la sensation insupportable que cette humiliation est visible de partout.

That is the secret of poetry. We burn in the woman we adore, we burn in the thought we espouse, we burn in the landscape that moves us

All predictions are wrong, that's one of the few certainties granted to mankind. But though predictions may be wrong, they are right about the people who voice them, not about their future but about their experience of the present moment.

Franz, on the other hand, was certain that the division of life into private and public spheres is the source of all lies: a person is one thing in private and something quite different in public. For Franz, living in truth meant breaking down the barriers between the private and the public. He was fond of quoting André Breton on the desirability of living in a glass house into which everyone can look and there are no secrets.