Milan Kundera: Trending quotes (page 7)

“If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders.”

“Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.”

“It is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty.”

“How goodness heightens beauty!”

“It was futile to attack with reason the stout wall of irrational feelings that, as is known, is the stuff of which the female mind is made.”

“The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order.”

“But what had happened, had happened, and it was no longer possible to right anything.”

“All novels… are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are automatically confronted by the question: what is the self? How can it be grasped?”

“We’ve known for a long time that it was no longer possible to overturn this world, nor reshape it, nor head off its dangerous headlong rush. There’s been only one possible resistance: to not take it seriously.”

“And there lies the horror: the past we remember is devoid of time. Impossible to reexperience a love the way we reread a book or resee a film.”

“Having a child is to show an absolute accord with mankind. If I have a child, it's as though I'm saying: I was born and have tasted life and declare it so good that is merits being duplicated.”

“True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.”

“Only after a while did it occur to me (in spite of the chilly silence which surrounded me) that my story was not of the tragic sort, but rather of the comic variety.

At any rate that afforded me some comfort.”

“Art arises from sources other than logic." (p.32)”

“When you sit face to face with someone who is pleasant, respectful, and polite, you have hard time reminding yourself that nothing he says is true/sincere.”

“People who shout joy from the rooftops are often the saddest of all.”

“The ludicrous element in our feeling does not make them any less authentic.”

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

“But which was the real me? Let me be perfectly honest: I was a man of many faces. (p.33)”