1,075 Quotes by Milan Kundera

Nous traversons le présent les yeux bandés (...) plus tard seulement , quand est dénoué le bandeau et que nous examinons le passé, nous nous rendons compte de ce que nous avons vécu et nous en comprenons le sens.

therein lies the power of culture: it redeems horror by transforming it into existential wisdom. If the spirit of the trial succeeds in annihilating this century's culture, nothing will remain of us but a memory of its atrocities sung by a chorus of children.

The first step in liquidating a people,' said Hubl, 'is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody 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. The world around it will forget even faster.

It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth.

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

Et là est l'horreur: le passé dont on se souvient est dépourvu de temps. Impossible de revivre un amour comme on relit un livre ou comme on revoit un film.

Not everything written on Kafka is Kafkology. How then to define Kafkology? By a tautology: Kafkology is discourse for Kafkologizing Kafka. For replacing Kafka with the Kafkologized Kafka.

Agnes subtracts from her self everything that is exterior and borrowed, in order to come closer to her sheer essence (even with the risk that zero lurks at the bottom of the subtraction). Laura's method is precisely the opposite: in order to make her self ever more visible, perceivable, seizable, sizeable, she keeps adding to it more and more attributes and she attempts to identify herself with them (with the risk that the essence of the self may be buried by the additional attributes).

Without asking her permission, someone is trying to intrude her life, draw her attention, in short, to bother her.