1,075 Quotes by Milan Kundera

L'uomo, spinto dal senso della bellezza, transforma un avvenimento casuale (la musica di Beethoven, una morte alla stazione) in un motivo che va poi a iscriversi nella composizione della sua vita. Ad esso ritorna, lo ripete, lo varia, lo sviluppa, lo traspone, come fa il compositore con i temi della sua sonata.

Le grand secret de la vie ne lui était pas inconnu : les femmes ne recherchent pas le bel homme, les femmes recherchent l'homme qui a eu de belles femmes.

[W]e must never allow the future to collapse under the burden of memory.

Almost from childhood, she knew that a concentration camp was nothing exceptional or startling but something very basic, a given into which we are born and from which we can escape only with the greatest of efforts, p. 137.

You know, it’s really very peculiar. To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn’t know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn’t even know how to be dead.

Flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee.

The Greek word for "return" is nostos. Algos means "suffering." So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.

The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us. Sabina was unaware of the goal that lay behind her longing to betray. The unbearable lightness of being —was that the goal?

Living, there is no happiness in that. Living: carrying one's painful self through the world. But being, being is happiness. Being: becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain.