1,075 Quotes by Milan Kundera

We go through the present blindfolded... Only later, when the blindfold is removed and we examine the past, do we realise what we've been through and understand what it means. 

Njeno se razočarano tijelo vuklo već gotovo pet mjeseci po sveučilišnim predavaonicama kad je jednom na ulici srelo drskog mladog inženjera koji ga je oslovio i nakon tri sastanka osvojio. A budući da je tijelo ovaj put bilo veoma (i posve neočekivano) zadovoljno, duša je ubrzo zaboravila ambicije i karijeru u struci, i (kao što se od prave duše i očekuje) pritekla u pomoć tijelu - spremno se prilagođavala inženjerovim svjetonazorima, njegovoj vedroj nemarnosti i šarmantnoj neodgovornosti.

Pour échapper à la souffrance, le plus souvent on se réfugie dans l’avenir. Sur la piste du temps, on imagine une ligne au-delà de laquelle la souffrance présente cessera d’exister.

The river flowed from century to century, and human affairs play themselves out on its banks. Play themselves out to be forgotten the next day, while the river flows on.

...his [Mayakovsky] genius was as indispensable to the Russian Revolution as Dzherzhinsky's police. Lyricism, lyricization, lyrical talk, lyrical enthusiasm are an integrating part of what is called the totalitarian world; that world is not the gulag as such; it's a gulag that has poems plastering its outside walls and people dancing before them.

The genius of lyric poetry is the genius of inexperience.

Look around you. Of all the people you see, no one is here by his own wish. Of course, what I just said is the most banal truth there is. So banal, and so basic, that we’ve stopped seeing it and hearing it.

A gesture cannot be regarded as the expression of an individual, as his creation (because no individual is capable of creating a fully original gesture, belonging to nobody else), nor can it even be regarded as that person's instrument; on the contrary, it is gestures that use us as their instruments, as their bearers and incarnations

She felt happy in Paris, happier than here, but only Prague held her by a secret bond of beauty.