“ Epic art is founded on action, and the model of a society in which action could play out in greatest freedom was that of the heroic Greek period; so said Hegel, and he demonstrated it with The Iliad:… Milan Kundera
“ This scene expresses the basic situation of immaturity; lyricism is an attempt to face that situation: the individual expelled from the protected enclosure of childhood wishes to enter the world, but… Milan Kundera
“ You certainly remember this scene from dozens of films: a boy and a girl are running hand in hand in a beautiful spring (or summer) landscape. Running, running, running and laughing. By laughing the t… Milan Kundera
“ Their message will never be decoded… because people have no patience to listen to it in an age when the accumulation of messages old and new is such that their voices cancel one another out. Today his… Milan Kundera
“ What drove such people to their sinister occupations? Spite? Certainly, but also the desire for order. Because the desire for order tries to transform the human world into an inorganic reign in which… Milan Kundera
“ When he told F. of his disgust at the eyelid's movement, he must have been sixteen. When he decided to study medicine, he must have been nineteen; by then, having already signed on to the contract to… Milan Kundera
“ Their message will never be decoded, not only because there is no key to it, but also because people have no patience to listen to it in an age when the accumulation of messages old and new is such th… Milan Kundera
“ How would I explain to him that I couldn’t make peace with him? How would I explain that if I did I would immediately lose my inner balance? How would I explain that one of the arms of my internal sca… Milan Kundera
“ Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer… Milan Kundera
“ He was looking for immensity. His life was hopelessly small, everything surrounding him was nondescript and gray. And death is absolute; it is indivisible and indissoluble. The presence of the girl wa… Milan Kundera
“ She wants to have her notebooks so that the flimsy framework of events, as she has constructed them in her school notebook, will be provided with walls and become a house she can live in. Because if t… Milan Kundera
“ What does it mean to demonstrate in the streets, what is the significance of that collective activity so symptomatic of the twentieth century? In stupefaction Ulrich watches the demonstrators from the… Milan Kundera
“ Who was the real me? I can only repeat: I was a man of many faces.At meetings I was earnest, enthusiastic, and committed; among friends, unconstrained and given to teasing; with Marketa, cynical and f… Milan Kundera
“ In the presence of Esch, values have hidden their faces. Order, loyalty, sacrifice—he cherishes all these words, but exactly what do they represent? Sacrifice for what? Demand what sort of order? He d… Milan Kundera
“ 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… Milan Kundera
“ He looks at houses, chateaus, forests, and thinks about the countless generations who used to see those things and who are gone now; and he understands that everything he is seeing is oblivion; pure o… Milan Kundera
“ She knew only too well that the song was a beautiful lie. As soon as kitsch is recognized for the lie it is, it moves into the context of non-kitsch, thus losing its authoritarian power and becoming a… Milan Kundera
“ Tereza keeps appearing before my eyes. I see her sitting on the stump petting Karenin’s head and ruminating on mankind’s debacles. Another image also comes to mind: Nietzsche leaving his hotel in Turi… Milan Kundera
“ It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare t… Milan Kundera
“ Of course, even before Flaubert, people knew stupidity existed, but they understood it somewhat differently: it was considered a simple absence of knowledge, a defect correctable by education. In Flau… Milan Kundera
