Quotes by Milan Kundera

“The cemetery was vanity transmogrified into stone. Instead of growing more sensible in death, the inhabitants of the cemetery were sillier than they had been in life.”

“Isn't that exactly the definition of biography? An artificial logic imposed on an 'incoherent succession of images'?”

“Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation.”

“The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead.”

“(God) being the old man invented in order to, and with whom to, hold long conversations.”

“Those who had fought for what they called the revolution maintained a great pride: the pride of being on the correct side of the front lines. Ten or twelve years later (around the time of our story...”

“Yes, it's a well-known fact about you: you're like death, you take everything.”

“The novel was born with the Modern Era, which made man, to quote Heidegger, the "only real subject," the ground for everything. It is largely through the novel that man as an individual was establi...”

“The girl was grateful to the young man for every bit of flattery; she wanted to linger for a moment in its warmth and so she said, 'You're very good at lying.''Do I look like a liar?''You look like...”

“She was aware that in love even the most passionate idealism will not rid the body's surface of its terrible, basic importance.”

“So she stood naked in front of the young man and at this moment stopped playing the game.”

“The engineer’s ready capitulation, however, did not hide from the poet’s mother the sad realization that the adventure into which she had plunged so impulsively--and which had seemed so intoxicatin...”

“The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting.”

“In Tereza’s eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood. For she had but a single weapon against the world of crudity surrounding her: the novels. She had read any number of them, from Fie...”

“Unlike the puerile loyalty to a conviction, loyalty to a friend is a virtue - perhaps the only virtue, the last remaining one.”

“Tell me, where in life is there a value that would make us consider suicide uncalled for on principle! Love? Or friendship? I guarantee that friendship is not a bit less fickle than love and it is ...”

“Today I know this: when it comes time to take stock, the most painful wound is that of broken friendships; and there is nothing more foolish than to sacrifice a friendship to politics.”

“Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.This is the obscenity of war: the intimacy of mutually shed blood, the lascivious proximity of two soldiers who, eye to eye, bayonet each ot...”

“Encouraged by her parents’ applause, the girl went on: “Do you think we take off our tops to give you pleasure? We do it for ourselves, because we like it, because it feels better, because it bring...”

“Fortunately women have the miraculous ability to change the meaning of their actions after the event.”