Milan Kundera Quotes

Prijateljstvo je neophodno čovjeku za dobar rad pamćenja. Sjećati se svoje prošlosti, nositi je uza se, to je možda nužan uvjet da se sačuva, kako kažu, integritet svoga 'ja'. Da to 'ja' ne zakržlja, da sačuva svoj obujam, potrebno je zalijevati sjećanja kao cvijeće u loncu, a to zalijevanje traži stalan dodir sa svjedocima prošlosti, to jest s prijateljima. Oni su naše zrcalo; naše pamćenje; ništa ne tražimo od njih osim da s vremena na vrijeme osvjetlaju to zrcalo da bismo se u njemu mogli ogledati.

But all he could think of was what Sabina would have said about it. Everything he did, he did for Sabina, the way Sabina would have liked to see it done. It was a perfectly innocent form of infidelity and one eminently suited to Franz, who would never have done his bespectacled student-mistress any harm. He nourished the cult of Sabina more as a religion than as love

But if we betray B., for whom we betrayed A., it does not necessarily follow that we have placated A. The life of a divorcée-painter did not in the least resemble the life of the parents she had betrayed. The first betrayal is irreparable. It calls forth a chain reaction of further betrayals, each of which takes us farther and farther away from the point of our original betrayal.

The more vast the amount of time we've left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it.

He looks at houses, chateaus, forests, and thinks about the countless generations who used to see those things and who are gone now; and he understands that everything he is seeing is oblivion; pure oblivion, the oblivion whose absolute state will soon be achieved, the moment he himself is gone. And again I think about the obvious idea (that astoundingly obvious idea) that everything that exists (nation, thought, music) can also not exist.

Yes, they have. It was back when they still didn't know each other by name. In the great hall of a mountain lodge, with people drinking and chattering around them, they exchanged a few commonplaces, but the tone of their voices made it clear that they wanted each other, and they withdrew into an empty corridor where, wordlessly, they kissed. She opened her mouth and pressed her tongue into Jean Marc's mouth, eager to lick whatever she would find inside. This zeal of their tongues was not a sensual necessity but an urgency to let each other know that they were prepared to make love, right away, instantly, fully and wildly and without losing a moment.

Graphomania (a mania for writing books) inevitably takes on epidemic proportions when a society develops to the point of creating three basic conditions: -

(1) an elevated level of general well being which allows people to devote themselves to useless activities
(2) a high degree of social atomization and , as a consequence, a general isolation of individuals;
(3) the absence of dramatic social changes in the nation's internal life.

When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novel teaches us to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude.

Such are the Splendors and Miseries of memory: it is proud of its ability to keep truthful track of the logical sequence of past events; but when it comes to how we experienced them at the time, memory feels no obligation to truth.

She was aware that in love even the most passionate idealism will not rid the body's surface of its terrible, basic importance.

"You certainly remember this scene from dozens of films: a boy and a girl are running hand in hand in a beautiful spring (or summer) landscape. Running, running, running and laughing. By laughing the two runners are proclaiming to the whole world, to audiences in all the movie theaters: "We're happy, we're glad to be in the world, we're in agreement with being!" It's a silly scene, a cliche, but it expresses a basic human attitude: serious laughter, laughter "beyond joking."

All churches, all underwear manufacturers, all generals, all political parties, are in agreement about that kind of laughter, and all of them rush to put the image of the two laughing runners on the billboards advertising their religion, their products, their ideology, their nation, their sex, their dishwashing powder."

"It is much more important to dig a half-buried crow out of the ground," he said, "than to send petitions to a president."

Is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessary to bring it about?

للحياة التي نخلفها وراءنا عادةُ الخروج السيئة من الظلمات، تقديم الشكايات ، وفرض الأحكام علينا .

Great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors.