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
jobs men epic
[Kafka] transformed the profoundly antipoetic material of a highly bureaucratized society into the great poetry of the novel; he transformed a very ordinary story of a man who cannot obtain a promised job . . . into myth, into epic, into a kind of beauty never before seen.
crazy love-is crazy-love
Yes, it's crazy. Love is either crazy or it's nothing at all.
plato philosophy love-is
He suddenly recalled from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split then in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.
humility exaggeration-is together
Mysticism and exaggeration go together. A mystic must not fear ridicule if he is to push all the way to the limits of humility or the limits of delight.
sunset auras unbearable
In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.
unbearable-lightness-of-being partners claims
The only relationship that can make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place and neither partner makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other.
novelists historic given
For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?
pleasure ambiguity greater
The greater the ambiguity, the greater the pleasure.
affliction bears should
Since the insignificance of all things is our lot, we should not bear it as an affliction but learn to enjoy it.
butterfly wind ridiculous
Immortality is a ridiculous illusion, an empty word, a butterfly net chasing the wind.
reason fragments existence
Only a literary work that reveals an unknown fragment of human existence has a reason for being.
passionate body surface
She was aware that in love even the most passionate idealism will not rid the body's surface of its terrible, basic importance.
unbearable metaphor dangerous
Metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with.
bad-company company
Sad company is bad company.