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
men paradise longing
The longing for Paradise is man's longing not to be man.
years long noise
Beauty has long since disappeared. It has slipped beneath the surface of the noise, the noise of words, sunk deep as Atlantis. The only thing left of it is the word, whose meaning loses clarity from year to year.
self long hatred
Bacon's portraits are an interrogation on the limits of the self. Up to what degree of distortion does an individual still remain himself? To what degree of distortion does a beloved person still remain a beloved person? For how long does a cherished face growing remote through illness, through madness, through hatred, through death still remain recognizable? Where is the border beyond which a self ceases to be a self?
long forgive-me forgiving
Forgive me," he went on. "For a long time I have had the peculiar habit of not arriving but appearing.
order longing life-is
The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order.
life outline quite rehearsal sketch whereas worth
We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always a sketch. No sketch is not quite the right word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch of nothing, an outline with no picture.
Broch is an inspiration to us, not only because of what he accomplished, but also because of all that he aimed at and could not attain.
art endless master novel technique trap
In order to make the novel into a polyhistorical illumination of existence, you need to master the technique of ellipsis, the art of condensation. Otherwise, you fall into the trap of endless length.
change
Every change of scene requires new expositions, descriptions, explanations.
almost discreet incapable life speaking states
I am incapable of speaking of myself and of my life and the states of my soul, I am discreet to an almost pathological degree, and there is nothing I can do against that.
accused bed breakfast bring brought careful dangerous unless
O lovers! Be careful in those dangerous first days! Once youve brought breakfast in bed youll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal.
jobs men epic
[Kafka] transformed the profoundly antipoetic material of a highly bureaucratized society into the great poetry of the novel; he transformed a very ordinary story of a man who cannot obtain a promised job . . . into myth, into epic, into a kind of beauty never before seen.
crazy love-is crazy-love
Yes, it's crazy. Love is either crazy or it's nothing at all.
basic born characters containing equally fond horrified human image novels
This is the image from which he was born...... Characters are not born, like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor, containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility......the characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them and equally horrified by them......