"nothing yet. I've been waiting." "for what?" she made no response. she could not tell him that she had been waiting for him."
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Quote collection
Milan Kundera quotes (page 10 of 21)
410 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Only the basic situations in life occur only once, never to return. For a man to be a man, he must be fully aware of this never-to-return. (p.148)"
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"Our dreams prove that to imagine - to dream about things that have not happened - is among mankind's deepest needs."
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"Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten."
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"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 to fall down in the middle of the main square in front of everybody, wishes to be down, lower than down."
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"For a novelist, a given historic situation is an anthropologic laboratory in which he explores his basic question: What is human existence?"
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"He took over anger to intimidate subordinates, and in time anger took over him."
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"So she stood naked in front of the young man and at this moment stopped playing the game."
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"Yes, it was too late, and Sabina knew she would leave Paris, move on, and on again, because were she to die here they would cover her up with a stone, and in the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable."
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"Seeing is limited by two borders: Strong light, which blinds, and total darkness."
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"Physical love is unthinkable without violence."
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"Sad company is bad company."
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"True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power."
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"A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time."
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"Such are the Splendors and Miseries of memory: it is proud of its ability to keep truthful track of the logical sequence of past events; but when it comes to how we experienced them at the time, memory feels no obligation to truth."
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"Metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with."
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"Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!"
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"The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past."
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"While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and sharing motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older, like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them."
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"The irresistible proliferation of graphomania shows me that everyone without exception bears a potential writer within him, so that the entire human species has good reason to go down into the streets and shout: we are all writers! for everyone is pained by the thought of disappearing, unheard and unseen, into an indifferent universe, and because of that everyone wants, while there is still time, to turn himself into a universe of words. one morning (and it will be soon), when everyone wakes up as a writer, the age of universal deafness and incomprehension will have arrived."
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