Quotes by Milan Kundera

About Milan Kundera:

Milan Kundera is a Czech-born writer who has been living in exile in France since 1975, having become a naturalised 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."
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

What does it mean to live in truth? Putting it negatively is easy enough: it means not lying, not hiding, and not dissimulating.

Milan Kundera

La vida humana acontece sólo una vez y por eso nunca podremos averiguar cuáles de nuestras decisiones fueron correctas y cuáles fueron incorrectas. En la situación dada sólo hemos podido decidir una vez y no nos ha sido dada una segunda, una ter...

Milan Kundera

El hombre lo vive todo a la primera y sin preparación. Como si un actor representase su obra sin ningún tipo de ensayo. Pero ¿qué valor puede tener la vida si el primer ensayo para vivir es ya la vida misma? Por eso la vida parece un boceto. Pero...

Milan Kundera

It was vertigo. A heady, insuperable longing to fall. We might also call vertigo the intoxication of the weak. Aware of his weakness, a man decides to give in rather than stand up to it. He is drunk with weakness, wishes to grow even weaker, wishes t...

Milan Kundera

To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as to take pride in it.

Milan Kundera

But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?

Milan Kundera

The best actors do not let the wheels show.

Milan Kundera

Because beyond their practical function, all gestures have a meaning that exceeds the intention of those who make them; when people in bathing suits fling themselves into the water, it is joy itself that shows in the gesture, notwithstanding any sadn...

Milan Kundera

The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting.

Milan Kundera

Il peut arriver des situations (dans les régimes dictatoriaux, par exemple) où prendre publiquement position est dangereux ; pour le danseur ce l'est pourtant un peu moins que pour les autres, car, s'étant promené sous la lumière des projecteurs...

Milan Kundera

Tous les hommes politiques d'aujourd'hui, selon Pontevin, sont un peu danseurs, et tous les danseurs se mêlent de politique, ce qui, toutefois, ne devrait pas nous amener à les confondre. Le danseur se distingue de l'homme politique ordinaire en ce...

Milan Kundera

Si un danseur a la possibilité d'entrer dans le jeu politique, il refusera ostensiblement toutes les négociations secrètes (qui sont depuis toujours le terrain de jeu de la vraie politique) en les dénonçant comme mensongères, malhonnêtes, hypo...

Milan Kundera

pour occuper la scène il faut en repousser les autres. Ce qui suppose une technique de combat spéciale. le combat que mène le danseur, Pontevin l'appelle le judo moral ; le danseur jette le gant au monde entier : qui est capable de se montrer plus...

Milan Kundera

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy.

Milan Kundera

Listening to a news broadcast is like smoking a cigarette and crushing the butt in the ashtray.

Milan Kundera

No matter how much we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition.

Milan Kundera

Hate traps us by binding us too tightly to our adversary.

Milan Kundera

A worker may be the hammer's master, but the hammer still prevails. A tool knows exactly how it is meant to be handled, while the user of the tool can only have an approximate idea.

Milan Kundera

Optimism is the opium of the people.

Milan Kundera

Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity.

Milan Kundera

The worth of a human being lies in the ability to extend oneself, to go outside oneself, to exist in and for other people.

Milan Kundera

Author Bio

  • NameMilan Kundera
  • DescriptionCzech author of Czech and French literature
  • BornApril 1, 1929
  • CountryFrance; Czech Republic
  • ProfessionWriter; Screenwriter; Translator; Novelist; Playwright
  • WorksThe Joke; The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting; The Unbearable Lightness Of Being
  • AwardsAustrian State Prize For European Literature; Herder Prize; Prix Mondial Cino Del Duca; Medal Of Merit; Prix Médicis; Legion Of Honour; Vilenica Prize