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
character self numbers
The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen
pain reason reasonable
Pain doesn't listen to reason, it has it's own reason, which is not reasonable
no-love
No love can survive muteness.
fall rain self
Living, there is no happiness in that. Living: carrying one’s painful self through the world. But being, being is happiness. Being: Becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain.
drama unbearable burden
Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.
needs certainty
What I need most of all is certainty.
moral judgment novel
Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality.
degrees doe coincidence
For existential mathematics, which does not exist, would probably propose this equation: the value of coincidence equals the degree of its improbability.
unique people able
What is unique about the "I" hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The individual "I" is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered.
waiting made response
nothing yet. I've been waiting." "for what?" she made no response. she could not tell him that she had been waiting for him.
lying self-confidence differences
The difference between the university graduate and the autodidact lies not so much in the extent of knowledge as in the extent of vitality and self-confidence.
song baby sleep
Sleep in my arms. Like a baby bird. Like a broom among brooms... in a broom closet. Like a tiny parrot. Like a whistle. Like a little song. A song sung by a forest... within a forest... a thousand years ago.
drinking sky water
Living is being happy: seeing, hearing, touching, drinking, eating, urinating, defecating, diving into the water and gazing at the sky, laughing and crying.
affliction bears should
Since the insignificance of all things is our lot, we should not bear it as an affliction but learn to enjoy it.