Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera
Milan Kunderais a Czech-born writer who went into exile in France in 1975, and became a naturalised French citizen in 1981. He "sees himself as a French writer and insists his work should be studied as French literature and classified as such in book stores"...
NationalityCzechoslovakian
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth1 April 1929
children love-is essence
Yes, the essence of every love is a child, and it makes no difference at all whether it has ever actually been conceived or born. In the algebra of love a child is the symbol of the magical sum of two beings.
self feelings suffering
I am not worthy of my suffering. A great sentence. It suggests not only that suffering is the basis of the self, its sole indubitable ontological proof, but also that it is the one feeling most worthy of respect; the value of all values.
laughter echoes games
If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and make it the object of our game; to turn it into a toy
intelligent finding-yourself born
Merely by being born intelligent, you right away find yourself in absolute exile.
character self numbers
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
pain reason reasonable
Pain doesn't listen to reason, it has it's own reason, which is not reasonable
no-love
No love can survive muteness.
fall rain self
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.
drama unbearable burden
Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.
needs certainty
What I need most of all is certainty.
moral judgment novel
Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality.
degrees doe coincidence
For existential mathematics, which does not exist, would probably propose this equation: the value of coincidence equals the degree of its improbability.
unique people able
What is unique about the "I" hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The individual "I" is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered.
waiting made response
nothing yet. I've been waiting." "for what?" she made no response. she could not tell him that she had been waiting for him.