"For existential mathematics, which does not exist, would probably propose this equation: the value of coincidence equals the degree of its improbability."
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Quote collection
Milan Kundera quotes (page 20 of 21)
410 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Graphomania (a mania for writing books) inevitably takes on epidemic proportions when a society develops to the point of creating three basic conditions: - (1) an elevated level of general well being which allows people to devote themselves to useless activities (2) a high degree of social atomization and , as a consequence, a general isolation of individuals; (3) the absence of dramatic social changes in the nation's internal life."
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"Tereza had gone back to sleep; he could not. He pictured her death. She was dead and having terrible nightmares; but because she was dead, he was unable to wake her from them. Yes, that is death: Tereza asleep, having terrible nightmares, and he unable to wake her."
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"Only from the perspective of such a utopia is it possible to use the concepts of pessimism and optimism with full justification: an optimist is someone who thinks that on planet number five the history of mankind will be less bloody. A pessimist is one who thinks otherwise."
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"Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality."
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"Fidelity gives a unity to lives that would otherwise splinter into thousands of split-second impressions."
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"Through the air floated only important words, and Flajsman said to himself that love has but one true measure, and that is death. At the end of true love is death, and only the love that ends in death is love."
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"There are things that can be accomplished only by violence. Physical love is unthinkable without violence."
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"Solitude: a sweet absence of looks."
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"I find myself fascinating."
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"What is unique about the "I" hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The individual "I" is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered."
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"She knew that there were all kinds of ways to make a conquest and that one of the surest roads to a woman's genitals was through her sadness."
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"In Tereza's eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood"
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"Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood."
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"Biographers know nothing about the intimate sex lives of their own wives, but they think they know all about Stendhal's or Faulkner's."
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"But deep down she said to herself, Franz maybe strong, but his strength is directed outward; when it comes to the people he lives with, the people he's loves, he's weak. Franz's weakness is called goodness. Franz would never give Sabina orders. He would never command her, as Tomas had, to lay the mirror on the floor and walk back and forth on it naked. Not that he lacks sensuality; he simply lacks the strength to give orders. There are things that can be accomplished only by violence. Physical love is unthinkable without violence."
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"But if God is gone and man is no longer master, then who is master?"
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"She is sadder and sadder, and for a man there is no balm more soothing than the sadness he has caused a woman."
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"The border between good and evil is terribly fuzzy."
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"All novels . . . are concerned with the enigma of the self. As soon as you create an imaginary being, a character, you are automatically confronted by the question: what is the self? How can it be grasped?"
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