Quotes from Milan Kundera

Love is a battle? said Franz. Well, I don't feel at all like fighting. And he left.

O amor não se manisfesta pelo desejo de fazer amor ( esse se aplica a uma multidão), mas pelo desejo do sono compartilhado ( esse desejo diz respeito a um só).

The cemetery was vanity transmogrified into stone.

The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us.

I say, indeed: consolation in the nonsentience of nature. For nonsentience is consoling; the world of nonsentience is the world outside human life; it is eternity; it is the sea gone off with the sun (Rimbaud).

It would be so simple to find peace in the world of fantasy. But I've always tried to live in the two worlds at the same time without giving up one for the other. I must not give up the real world even though I am losing everything in it. Perhaps it will be enough in the end if I manage one thing. One last thing: To hand over my life as a clear message to the one person able to understand it and carry it on.

La tension dramatique, c'est la véritable malédiction du roman parce qu'elle transforme tout, même les plus belles pages, même les scènes et les observations les plus surprenantes, en une simple étape menant au dénouement final, où se concentre le sens de tout ce qui précède. Dévoré par le feu de sa propre tension, le roman se consume comme une botte de paille

B?t c? ai có ý ??nh mu?n vÆ°Æ¡n lên tá»›i cái gì cao hÆ¡n ??u ph?i tiên li?u ngày nào Ä'ó s? m?c ph?i c?n b?nh s? hãi Ä'á»™ cao.

Atunci am inteles semnificatia magica a cercului. Cand iesi din rand mai poti reveni. Randul este o formatiune deschisa. Cercul insa se inchide, si-l parasesti fara posibilitatea intoarcerii.

y life is always like a sketch. No, sketch is not quite the word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.

Einmal ist keinmal. What happens but once might as well not have happened at all. The history of the Czechs will not be repeated, nor will the history of Europe. The history of the Czechs and of Europe is a pair of sketches from the pen of mankind's fateful inexperience, unbearably light, light as a feather, as dust swirling into the air, as whatever will no longer exist tomorrow.

When music plays, we hear the melody, forgetting that it is only one of the modes of time; when the orchestra falls silent, we hear time; time itself.

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 cirumvented. 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. The novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become.

Raised as we are on the mythology of the Old Testament, we might say that an idyll is an image that has remained with us like a memory of Paradise: life in Paradise was not like following a straight line to the unknown; it was not an adventure. It moved in a circle among known objects. Its monotony bred happiness, not boredom.

Noise has one advantage. It drowns out words - Franz

Extremele marcheaza frontierele in spatele carora viata inceteaza, iar pasiunea extremismului, in arta si in politica, este dorinta camuflata de a muri.

Porque o homem pensa e a verdade escapa-lhe. Porque quanto mais os homens pensam, mais o pensamento de um se afasta do outro. E, finalmente, porque o homem nunca é aquilo que pensa ser.

Cel ce tr?ieÈ™te printre str?ini se miÈ™c? într-un spaÈ›iu vid, deasupra p?mântului, f?r? acea plas? de protecÈ›ie pe care i-o întinde oric?rei fiinÈ›e umane propria-i È›ar?, unde se afl? familia sa, colegii s?i, prietenii s?i, È™i unde se face lesne înÈ›eles în limba pe care o cunoaÈ™te din copil?rie.

She saw her soul shinning through the features on her face.

Suntem cu toÈ›ii încredinÈ›aÈ›i c? e de neînchipuit ca marea dragoste a vieÈ›ii noastre s? fie ceva uÈ™or, ceva lipsit de orice greutate; ne imagin?m c? însuÈ™i posacul Beethoven, cu pletele sale cumplite, cânt? al s?u "Es muss sein!" spre a cinsti marea noastr? dragoste.

To love someone out of compassion means not really to love.

When the north pole comes so close as to touch the south pole, the earth disappears and man finds himself in a void that makes his head spin and beckons him to fall.

Her image of it came entirely from what she had heard. Or read. Or received unconsciously from distant ancestors. And yet it lived within her.

I have no mission. No one has. And it's a terrific relief to realize you're free, free of all missions.