Quotes by Milan Kundera

“Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding.”

“When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novel t...”

“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 brings ...”

“The characters in my novels are my own unrealised 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 circumvented.”

“It is precisely when their interior worlds change shape that Bezukhov and Bolkonsky are confirmed as individuals; that they surprise; that they make themselves different; that their freedom catches...”

“a small nation resembles a big family and likes to describe itself that way. In the language of the smallest European people, in Icelandic, the term for "family" is fjlskylda; the etymology is eloq...”

“Too much faith is the worst ally. When you believe in something literally, through your faith you'll turn it into something absurd. One who is a genuine adherent, if you like, of some political out...”

“There is nothing harder to explain than humor.”

“Humor: the divine flash that reveals the world in its moral ambiguity and man in his profound incompetence to judge others; humor: the intoxicating relativity of human things; the strange pleasure ...”

“People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and ...”

“But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?”

“Kitsch is the aesthetic ideal of all politicians and all political parties and movements. Those of us who live in a society where various political tendencies exist side by side and competing influ...”

“For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?”

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and...”

“This scene expresses the basic situation of immaturity; lyricism is an attempt to face that situation: the individual expelled from the protected enclosure of childhood wishes to enter the world, b...”

“But it was not only a feeling of guilt which drove him into danger. He detested the pettiness that made life semilife and men semimen. He wished to put his life on one of a pair of scales and death...”

“He was looking for immensity. His life was hopelessly small, everything surrounding him was nondescript and gray. And death is absolute; it is indivisible and indissoluble. The presence of the girl...”

“Vertigo is something else than the fear of falling. It is the voice of emptiness below us which temps and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defense ourselves.”

“To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it.”

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