Milan Kundera
Franco-Czech novelist born in Brno, Moravia, now the Czech Republic.
To love someone out of compassion means not really to love.
Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.
When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme.
We can regard the gulag as a septic tank used by totalitarian kitsch to dispose of its refuse.
If a love is to be unforgettable, fortuities must immediately start fluttering down to it like birds to Francis of Assisi's shoulders.
Pain doesn't listen to reason, it has its own reason, which is not reasonable.
You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange.
This is the real and the only reason for friendship: to provide a mirror so the other person can contemplate his image from the past, which, without the eternal blah-blah of memories between pals, would long ago have disappeared.