Kundera Milan photo

Kundera Milan

People best know Czech-born writer Milan Kundera for his novels, including

The Joke

(1967),

The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

(1979), and

The Unbearable Lightness of Being

(1984), all of which exhibit his extreme though often comical skepticism.

Since 1975, he lived in exile in France and in 1981 as a naturalized citizen.

Kundera wrote in Czech and French. He revises the French translations of all his books; people therefore consider these original works as not translations.

The Communist government of Czechoslovakia censored and duly banned his books from his native country, the case until the downfall of this government in the velvet revolution of 1989.


“Cemetaries in Bohemia are like gardens”
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“But the longer a man grows in his own darkness, the more his outer form diminishes”
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“No one can get reall drunk on a novle or a painting, but who can help getting drunk on Beethoven's night, Bartok's Sonata for two Pianos and percussion or the Beatles' White Album? He loved mozart as much as rock. He considered music a liberating force, it liberated him from lonliness, introversion, the dust of the library; it opened the door of hi body and allowed his soul to step out into the world to make friends, He loved to dance an regretted that Sabina did not share his passion”
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“But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak have to be strong enough to leave.”
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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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“because human lives are composed in precisely such a fashion. They are composed like music”
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“Altfel spus; orice relatie de dragoste se intemeiaza pe niste conventii nescrise, pe care partenerii le stabilesc inconstient din primele saptamani. Traiesc amandoi ca intr-un vis, in acelasi timp, fara sa-si dea seama, redacteaza in amanuntime, ca niste jurnalisti intransigenti, clauzele contractului lor. O,amanti! fiti prudenti in aceste prime zile primejioase. Daca veti duce celuilalt micul dejun la pat, va trebui sa faceti asta mereu, de nu veti fi acuzati de indiferenta si tradare.”
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“صدای پاشنه های کفشتان در پیاده رو مرا به فکر راه هایی که نپیموده ام، راه هایی که به سان ِ شاخه های درخت پر از رشته های فرعی اند، می اندازد. شما در من وسوسه های دوران نوجوانی ام را بیدار کرده اید. من زندگی را در برابرم همچون درختی تصور می کردم. در آن هنگام آن را درخت امکانات می نامیدم. تنها در لحظه های کوتاه زندگی را این چنین می بینیم. سپس زندگی همچون راهی نمایان می شود که یک بار برای همیشه تحمیل شده است. همچون تونلی که از آن نمی توان بیرون رفت. با این همه جلوه ی درخت در ذهن ما همچون حسرت گذشته محو ناشدنی باقی می ماند...”
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