Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera
Milan Kunderais a Czech-born writer who went into exile in France in 1975, and became a naturalised French citizen in 1981. He "sees himself as a French writer and insists his work should be studied as French literature and classified as such in book stores"...
NationalityCzechoslovakian
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth1 April 1929
memories struggle book
The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long that nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was... The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
lying chaos unbearable-lightness-of-being
On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.
butterfly wind ridiculous
Immortality is a ridiculous illusion, an empty word, a butterfly net chasing the wind.
strong hurt unbearable
But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.
girl moving boys
The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us.
kitsch matter human-condition
No matter how much we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition.
men hatred certain
Man can only be certain about the present moment. But is that quite true either? Can he really know the present? Is he in a position to make any judgment about it? Certainly not. For how can a person with no knowledge of the future understand the meaning of the present? If we do not know what future the present is leading us toward, how can we say whether this present is good or bad, whether it deserves our concurrence, or our suspicion, or our hatred?
beautiful mistake men
For he was aware of the great secret of life: Women don't look for handsome men. Women look for men who have had beautiful women. Having an ugly mistress is therefore a fatal mistake.
children questions-and-answers limits
Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limit of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.
love-is definitions definition-of-love
Love is a continual interrogation. I don’t know of a better definition of love.
home mind unbearable
In the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable.
age moments certain
There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.
love-is desire half
Love is a desire for that lost half of ourselves.
love-is ends true-love-is
At the end of true love is death, and only the love that ends in death is love.