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
suffering glimpse nostalgia
How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can you suffer from the absence of a person who is present? You can suffer nostalgia in the presence of the beloved if you glimpse a future where the beloved is no more
morning age wake-up
The irresistible proliferation of graphomania shows me that everyone without exception bears a potential writer within him, so that the entire human species has good reason to go down into the streets and shout: we are all writers! for everyone is pained by the thought of disappearing, unheard and unseen, into an indifferent universe, and because of that everyone wants, while there is still time, to turn himself into a universe of words. one morning (and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a writer, the age of universal deafness and incomprehension will have arrived.
art media opaque
...in our time art is encrusted with a noisy, opaque, logorrhea of theory that prevents a work from coming into direct, media free, non-interpreted contact with its viewer (its reader, its listener)
morning sleep blow
...people don't respect the morning. An alarm clock violently wakes them up, shatters their sleep like the blow of an ax, and they immediately surrender themselves to deadly haste.
life might unbearable-lightness-of-being
Einmal ist keinmal, says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.
effort argument justify
Nothing requires a greater effort of thought than arguments to justify the rule of non-thought.
eye infinity unbearable-lightness-of-being
Yes, if you're looking for infinity, just close your eyes!
sadness space together
She was experiencing the same odd happiness and odd sadness as then. The sadness meant: We are at the last station. The happiness meant: We are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content. Happiness filled the space of sadness.
loyalty lasts virtue
Unlike the puerile loyalty to a conviction, loyalty to a friend is a virtue - perhaps the only virtue, the last remaining one.
sound individual partners
Sensuality is the total mobilization of the senses: an individual observes his partner intently, straining to catch every sound.
La memoria no guarda películas, guarda fotografías.
men sad-life gentleman
Ah, ladies and gentlemen, a man lives a sad life when he cannot take anything or anyone seriously.
betrayal forever breakfast
Oh lovers! be careful in those dangerous first days! once you've brought breakfast in bed you'll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal.
plato philosophy love-is
He suddenly recalled from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split then in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.