1,075 Quotes by Milan Kundera

The novel is not the author’s confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become.

If I were a doctor, I would diagnose his condition thus: “The patient is suffering from nostalgic insufficiency.

The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen.

Tomas lived under the hypnotic spell cast by the excruciating beauty of Tereza’s dreams.

The very beginning of Genesis tells us that God created man in order to give him dominion over fish and fowl and all creatures. Of course, Genesis was written by a man, not a horse.

It is entirely possible,” said Tomas, “that a female dog addressed continually by a male name will develop lesbian tendencies.

Every true novelist listens for that suprapersonal wisdom, which explains why great novels are always a little more intelligent than their authors. Novelists who are more intelligent than their books should go into another line of work.

This reconciliation with Hitler reveals the profound moral perversity of a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return, for in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted.

Long ago one of the Cynic philosophers strutted through the streets of Athens in a torn mantle to make himself admired by everyone by displaying his contempt for convention. One day Socrates met him and said: ‘I see your vanity through the hole in your mantle.’ Your dirt too, sir, is vanity, and your vanity is dirty.