Milan Kundera

Czech Republic
Born on 1 Apr 1929
Writer

Quotes

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Now time has a very different look; it is no longer the conquering present capturing the future; it is the present conquered and captured and carried off by the past.

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

Immortality
Art arises from sources other than logic.

Life is Elsewhere
And there lies the horror: the past we remember is devoid of time. Impossible to reexperience a love the way we reread a book or resee a film.

Ignorance
When a private talk over a bottle of wine is broadcast on the radio, what can it mean but that the world is turning into a concentration camp?

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
What does it mean to live in truth? Putting it negatively is easy enough: it means not lying, not hiding, and not dissimulating.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Optimism is the opium of the people.

The Joke
The ludicrous element in our feeling does not make them any less authentic.

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

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The purpose of the poetry is not to dazzle us with an astonishing thought, but to make one moment of existence unforgettable and worthy of unbearable nostalgia.

Immortality
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays