Quotes from Milan Kundera

The worth of a human being lies in the ability to extend oneself, to go outside oneself, to exist in and for other people.

Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.

Yes, it's crazy. Love is either crazy or it's nothing at all.

Necessity knows no magic formulae-they are all left to chance. If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders.

Love is a continual interrogation. I don't know of a better definition of love.

Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor

At the end of true love is death, and only the love that ends in death is love.

Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short.

And there lies the horror: the past we remember is devoid of time. Impossible to reexperience a love the way we reread a book or resee a film.

Once her love had been publicized, it would gain weight, become a burden.

A single metaphor can give birth to love.

No love can survive muteness.

Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another.

Every change of scene requires new expositions, descriptions, explanations.

Nothing requires a greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of non-thought.

Broch is an inspiration to us, not only because of what he accomplished, but also because of all that he aimed at and could not attain.

Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end.

In order to make the novel into a polyhistorical illumination of existence, you need to master the technique of ellipsis, the art of condensation. Otherwise, you fall into the trap of endless length.

On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.

For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?

Love is a battle, and I plan to go on fighting. To the end.

But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science , instantly fades away.

I have a strong will to love you for eternity.

If I hadn't met you, I'd certainly have fallen in love with him.