1,075 Quotes by Milan Kundera

Love is the glorification of the present.

The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?

But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science, instantly fades away.

Chi tende continuamente verso l’alto deve aspettarsi, prima o poi, di essere colto dalla vertigine.

It was vertigo. A heady, insuperable longing to fall. We might also call vertigo the intoxication of the weak. Aware of his weakness, a man decides to give in rather than stand up to it. He is drunk with weakness, wishes to grow even weaker, wishes to fall down in the middle of the main square in front of everybody, wishes to be down, lower than down.” -Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, p. 76.

That’s how it is: even in the throes of death, man is always on stage. And even ‘the plainest’ of them, the least exhibitionist, because it’s not always the man himself who climbs on stage. If he doesn’t do it, someone will put him there. That is his fate as a man.

It was as though she has found refuge inside a shell and the only sound she could hear was the sea of an inimical world.

If I hadn’t met you, I’d certainly have fallen in love with him.

She looked at him with love in her eyes, but she feared the night ahead, feared her dreams. Her life was split. Both day and night were competing for her.