Quotes by Milan Kundera

“In Irenas head the alcohol plays a double role: it frees her fantasy, encourages her boldness, makes her sensual, and at the same time it dims her memory. She makes love wildly, lasciviously, and a...”

“Weve known for a long time that it was no longer possible to overturn this world, nor reshape it, nor head off its dangerous headlong rush. Theres been only one possible resistance: to not take it ...”

“Most people willingly deceive themselves with a doubly false faith; they believe in eternal memory (of men, things, deeds, peoples) and in rectification (of deeds, errors, sins, injustice). Both ar...”

“There is no particular merit in being nice to one's fellow man... We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is a result of our emotions - love apathy, charity of ...”

“The old duality of body and soul has become shrouded in scientific terminology, and we can laugh at it as merely an obsolete prejudice.But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his sto...”

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

“And do you know the story about Haydns head? They cut it away from the still-warm cadaver so some insane scientist could take apart the brain and pinpoint the location of musical genius. And the Ei...”

“True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.”

“Betrayal means breaking ranks and going off into the unknown. Sabina knew of nothing more magnificent than going off into the unknown.”

“For a trial is initiated not to render justice but to annihilate the defendant.Even when the trial is of dead people, the point is to kill them off a second time: by burning their books; by removin...”

“And think about the precise meaning of that term: a Narcissus is not proud. A proud man has disdain for other people, he undervalues them. The Narcissus overvalues them, because in every person's e...”

“Every novel says to the reader: Things are not as simple as you think. That is the novels eternal truth, but it grows steadily harder to hear amid the din of easy, quick answers that come faster th...”

“The tree of possibilities: life as it reveals itself to a man arriving, astonished, at the threshold of his adult life: an abundant treetop canopy filled with bees singing. And he thinks he underst...”

“No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals were not expelled from Paradise. The love between dog and man is idyllic. It knows no conflicts, no...”

“given the nature of the human couple, the love of a man and a woman is a priori inferior to that which can exist (at least in the best instances) in the love between man and dog...It is a completel...”

“Dogs are our link to Paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring it ...”

“How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can you suffer from the absence of a person who is present? You can suffer nostalgia in the presence of the beloved if you glimps...”

“If I were a doctor, I would diagnose his condition thus: "The patient is suffering from nostalgic insufficiency.”

“an old villa surrounded by a garden looked to them like the image of a comforting home, the dream of an idyll long past.”

“Until then her view of time was the present moving forward and devouring the future; she either feared its swiftness (when she was awaiting something difficult) or rebelled at its slowness (when sh...”