Quotes About Kundera

In Czech, according to Milan Kundera, litost is a state of agony and torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery.

i'm too fearful of the professors for whom art is only a derivative of philosophical and theoretical trends (The Art of the Novel, 32)

Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress.

Forgive me," he went on. "For a long time I have had the peculiar habit of not arriving but appearing.

The history of music is mortal, but the idiocy of the guitar is eternal.

Of course, uniformity rules everywhere. But in this park it has a wider choice of uniforms. So you can hold on to the illusion of your own individuality.

I understood that there was no escaping the memories, that I was surround by them.

Metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with.

Love is by definition an unmerited gift; being loved without meriting it is the very proof of real love.

via nas lágrimas tentáculos que queriam apanhá-lo para o arrancarem ao idílio do seu não-destino: as lágrimas repugnavam-lhe.

It is questions with no answers that set the limits of human possibilities --> Pretty Wittgenstein like.

Y como en aquel momento no tenía nada con que obsequiar al mundo, obsequiaba a Klara. Al menos con promesas

What is so often laughable, in the stories of Kundera's Czechoslovakia, is how grimly serious just about everything turns out to be, jokes and games and pleasure included; what's laughable is how terribly little there is to laugh at with any joy.

Kundera's novel [ The Unbearable Lightness of Being ] seems as relevant now as it did when it was first published. Relevance, however, is nothing compared with that sense of felt life which the truly great novelists communicate.

The Buddhists are right -- and so is Kundera -- this lightness of being is perfectly unbearable. Who can accept the idea of having only one life?