Milan Kundera
Franco-Czech novelist born in Brno, Moravia, now the Czech Republic.
What makes a leftist a leftist is not this or that theory but his ability to integrate any theory into the kitsch called the Grand March.
Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another.
Optimism is the opium of the people.
In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions. It follows, then, that the true opponent of totalitarian kitsch is the person who asks questions. A question is like a knife that slices through the stage backdrop and gives us a look at what lies hidden behind it.
Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring — it was peace.
Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that's very beautiful. But what would they nourish their intimate talk with? However contemptible the world may be, they still need it to be able to talk together.
The eye... the point where a person's identity is concentrated.
It is always that way: between the moment he meets her again and the moment he recognizes her for the woman he loves, he has some distance to go.
For the first few seconds, she was afraid he would throw her out because of the crude noises she was making, but then he put his arms around her. She was grateful to him for ignoring her rumbles, and she kissed him passionately, her eyes misting.
Any new possibility that existence acquires, even the least likely, transforms everything about existence.
Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.
As you live out your desolation, you can be either unhappy or happy. Having that choice is what constitutes your freedom.
"...[O]f a world that rests essentially on the nonexistence of return, [...] everything is pardoned in advance and therefore everything cynically permitted."
Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect some day to suffer vertigo.
A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality.
No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.
The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists' discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish.
Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.
The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the assassination of Allende drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the war in the Sinai Desert made people forget Allende, the Cambodian massacre made people forget Sinai, and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten.
In times when history still moved slowly, events were few and far between and easily committed to memory. They formed a commonly accepted backdrop for thrilling scenes of adventure in private life. Nowadays, history moves at a brisk clip. A historical event, though soon forgotten, sparkles the morning after with the dew of novelty. No longer a backdrop, it is now the adventure itself, an adventure enacted before the backdrop of the commonly accepted banality of private life.
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.