Quotes from Milan Kundera

Man reckons with immortality, and forgets to reckon with death.

A man who loses his privacy loses everything. And a man who gives it up of his own free will is a monster.

Only the basic situations in life occur only once, never to return. For a man to be a man, he must be fully aware of this never-to-return. (p.148)

Nudity is the uniform of the other side... nudity is a shroud.

A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.

Aren't we living in a world where heedless men only desire decapitated women?

There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.

Only a literary work that reveals an unknown fragment of human existence has a reason for being.

Today we're all alike, all of us bound together by our shared apathy toward work. That very apathy has become a passion. The one great collective passion of our time.

Optimism is the opium of the people.

There is such a thing as everyday, ordinary, vulgar ecstasy; the ecstasy of anger, the ecstasy of speed at the wheel, the ecstasy of ear-splitting noise, ecstasy in the soccer stadium.

The senator had only one argument in his favour: his feeling. When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme.

You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.

Beauty is a rebellion against time.

The beauty of New York is unintentional; it arose independent of human design, like a stalagmite cavern.

Business only has two functions - innovation and marketing.

Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us.

I think I am a much better actor than I have allowed myself to be.

Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.

O lovers! Be careful in those dangerous first days! Once youve brought breakfast in bed youll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal

For existential mathematics, which does not exist, would probably propose this equation: the value of coincidence equals the degree of its improbability.

Dogs do not have many advantages over people, but one of them is extremely important: euthanasia is not forbidden by law in their case; animals have the right to a merciful death.

Solitude: a sweet absence of looks.

I feel a frantic desire to free myself. To start all over again and in another way.