Milan Kundera Quotes

To hide and feel guilty would be the beginning of defeat

تخيل أنك عشت في عالم ليس فيه مرايا، كنت ستحلم بوجهك، كنت ستتخيله كنوع من الانعكاس الخارجي لما هو داخلك.

When we are thrust out into the world just as we are, we first have to identify with that particular throw of the dice, with that accident organized by the divine computer: to get over our surprise that precisely this (what we see facing us in the mirror) is our self. Without the faith that our face expresses our self, without that basic illusion, that arch-illusion, we can not live or at least we cannot take life seriously. And it isn‘t enough for us to identify with our selves, it is necessary to do so passionately, to the point of life and death. Because only in this way we can regard ourselves not merely as a variant of a human prototype but as a being with its own irreplaceable essence.

فى قاموسى الكافر، ثمة كلمة واحدة مقدسـة: الصداقة

The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have someone write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was.

Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.

Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.

Our lives may be separate, but they run in the same direction, like parallel lines.

When we want to give expression to a dramatic situation in our lives, we tend to use metaphors of heaviness. We say that something has become a great burden to us. We either bear the burden or fail and go down with it, we struggle with it, win or lose. And Sabina - what had come over her? Nothing. She had left a man because she felt like leaving him. Had he persecuted her? Had he tried to take revenge on her? No. 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.

الخلط بين المظهر الجسدي للمحبوبة ومظهر آخر: كم مرة سبق له ان عاش ذلك؟ عاشه دائماً بالدهشة ذاتها: هل الفرق بينها وبين الآخريات إذن بهذه الضآلة؟ كيف يمكن أن لا يعرف كيف يتعرف على طيب أحب الكائنات إليه، طيب الكائن الذي يعده لا مثيل له؟!

Living for Sabina meant seeing. Seeing is limited by two borders: strong light, which blinds, and total darkness. Perhaps that was what motivated Sabina's distaste for all extremism. Extremes mean borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism, in art and in politics, is a veiled longing for death.

It was time laid bare, time in and of itself, time at its most basic and primal, and it forced me to call it by its true name (for now I was living pure time — pure, vacant time) so as not to forget it for a moment, keep it constantly before me, and feel its weight.

My dear
colleagues, as you know, the greatest misfortune for a man is a happy marriage; he hasn't the
slightest hope of a divorce.

أترين يا كلارا ؟ أنتى تظنين أن الكذبة تعادل الأخـرى، لكنك مخطأة. أستطيع أن أختلق أى شئ، وأن أضحك على ذقون الناس وأخدعهم، وأن أقوم بكل أنواع التدليس من دون أن أشعر بأنى كاذب. فهذه الأنواع من الكذب، إن شئتى أن تسمى هذا كذبًا، هى أنا، أنا على حقيقتى. فبهذه الأنواع من الكذب لا أخفى شيئًا، بل أعبر عن الحقيقة. لكن هناك أشياء لا أستطيع الكذب فيها. هناك أشياء خبرتها جيدًا، أعرف معناها وأحبها، وهى أشياء لا أتساهل فيها. الكذب فيها حطّ من قدرى، وهو أمر لا أطيقه، فلا تطالبينى بيه، لأننى لن أفعله.

he tried to design his life in such a way that no woman could move in with a suitcase