Milan Kundera

“She must jump from square to square, right leg first, then left, then both together, and make a show of caring whether or not she steps on a line. She must go on jumping day after day, bearing the burden of time on her shoulders like a cross that grows heavier from day to day.”

“You know what it's like when two people start a conversation. First one of them does all the talking, the other breaks in with "That's just like me, I... " and goes on himself until his partner finds a chance to say, "That's just like me, I... "The "That's just like me, I... 's" may look like a form of agreement, a way of carrying the other party's idea a step further, but that is an illusion...”

“the whole mystery”

“He considered music a liberating force: it liberated him from loneliness, introversion, the dust of the library; it opened the door of his body and allowed his soul to step out into the world and make friends.”

“La cultura sucumbe bajo el volumen de la producción, la avalancha de letras, la locura de la cantidad. Por ese motivo te digo que un libro prohibido en tu país significa infinitamente más que los millones de palabras que vomitan nuestras universidades.”

“What remains of the dying population of Cambodia? One large photograph of an American actress holding an Asian child in her arms. What remains of Tomas? An inscription reading: "He wanted the Kingdom of God on Earth." What remains of Beethoven? A frown, an improbable mane, and a somber voice intoning "Es muss sein!" What remains of Franz? An inscription reading: "A return after long wanderings." And so on and so forth. Before we are forgotten, we will be turned into kitsch. Kitsch is the stopover between being and oblivion.”

“That is why she dislikes dreams: they impose an unacceptable equivalence among the various periods of the same life, a leveling contemporaneity of everything a person has ever experienced; they discredit the present by denying it its privileged status.”

“...The beauty of New York rests on a completely different base. It's unintentional. It arose independent of human design, like a stalagmitic cavern. Forms which are in themselves quite ugly turn up fortuitously, without design, in such incredible surroundings that they sparkle with a sudden wondrous poetry. ... Unintentional beauty. Yes. Another way of putting it might be 'beauty by mistake.”

“All this time he was sitting up in bed and looking at the woman who was lying beside him and holding his hand in her sleep. He felt an ineffable love for her. Her sleep must have been very light at the moment because she opened her eyes and gazed up at him questioningly. “What are you looking at?” she asked.He knew that instead of waking her he should lull her back to sleep, so he tried to come up with an answer that would plant the image of a new dream in her mind.“I’m looking at the stars,” he said.“Don’t say you’re looking at the stars. That’s a lie. You’re looking down.”“That’s because we’re on an airplane. The stars are below us.”“Oh, in an airplane,” said Tereza, squeezing his hand even tighter and falling asleep again. And Tomas knew that Tereza was looking out of the round window of an airplane flying high above the stars.”

“He looks at Mama out of the corner of his eye, again surprised by how little she is. As if all of her life has been a slow process of shrinkage.But just what is that shrinkage?Is it the real shrinkage of a person abandoning his adult dimensions and starting on the long journey through old age and death toward distances where there is only a nothingness without dimension?”

“In Wenceslaus Square, in Prague, a guy is throwing up. Another guy comes up to him, pulls a long face, shakes his head, and says: "I know just what you mean.”

“Ljudsko vrijeme se ne okreće u krugu, već juri po pravoj liniji naprijed. To je razlog zašto čovjek ne može biti sretan, jer je sreća čežnja za ponavljanjem.”

“Optimismus je opium lidstva!Zdravý duch páchne blbostí. Ať žije Trockij!Ludvík”

“Love is poetry, poetry is love”

“Izum lokomotive sadrži u klici plan zrakoplova koji neizostavno vodi do svemirske rakete. To je logika sadržana u samim stvarima, ili, da kažemo drukčije, dio je božanskog nauma. Možete cijelo čovječanstvo zamijeniti za neko drugo, ipak će evolucija koja ide od bicikla do rakete ostati nepromjenjena. Čovjek nije autor te evolucije, nego samo izvršitelj. Čak jadni izvršitelj, jer mu nije poznat smisao onoga što izvršava. Taj nam smisao ne pripada, pripada samo Bogu, a mi smo ovdje da ga slušamo kako bi mogao raditi što mi se sviđa.”

“Ni jedna ljubav ne može preživjeti u šutnji.”

“Rekao bih da je količina dosade, ako se dosadu može izmjeriti, danas mnogo veća nego nekoć. Jer su nekadašnja zanimanja, barem velikim dijelom, bila nezamisliva bez strastvene predanosti: seljaci zaljubljeni u svoju zemlju; moj djed, čarobnjak lijepih stolova; postolari su znali napamet stopala svojih suseljana; šumari; vrtlari; pretostavljam da su tada čak i vojnici ubijali sa strašću. Pitanje smisla života nije se postavljalo, bilo je njima posve prirodno, u njihovim radionicama, njihovim poljima. Svako je zanimalnje stvorilo vlastiti način mišljenja, vlastiti način postojanja. Liječnik je razmišljao drugačije od seljaka, vojnik se ponašao drukčije od učitelja. Danas smo svi jednaki, ujedinjeni zajedničkom ravnodušnošću prema svom poslu. Ta ravnodušnost postala je strašću. Jednom velikom kolektivnom strašću našega doba.”

“Geceden gündüze, uykudan uyanık yaşama geçmek için heykellerle çevrili bir köprü gibi ağır ağır aştığım bu sabah saatlerinin tembelliğini de çok sevdiğimi söylesem. Geceki düşlerimin sürdüğüne ve uykunun serüveniyle günün serüveninin bir uçurumla ayrılmadığına beni inandırıcak ani bir rastlantıya, küçük bir mucizeye sonsuz minnet duyacağım anıdır bugün”

“Aşırı uçlar, ardında yaşamın sona erdiği sınırlar demektir ve sanatta da politikada da, aşırılığa duyulan tutku, ölüme duyulan örtük bir özlemdir aslında.”

“Love begins with a metaphor. Love begins at a point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.”

“All of man's life among his kind is nothing other than a battle to seize the ear of others.”

“Fare l'amore con una donna e dormire con una donna sono due passioni non solo diverse, ma quasi opposte. L'amore non si manifesta con il desiderio di fare l'amore [...] ma col desiderio di dormire insieme.”

“I bambini sono senza passato ed è questo tutto il mistero dell'innocenza magica del loro sorriso...”

“Ma è proprio il debole che deve saper essere forte e andar via, quando il forte è troppo debole per poter fare del male al debole.”

“Tomas lived under the hypnotic spell cast by the excruciating beauty of Tereza's dreams.”

“But I'm not dead!" Tereza cried. "I can still feel!""So can we," the corpses laughed.”

“Just as someone in pain is linked by his groans to the present moment (and is entirely outside past and future), so someone bursting out in such ecstatic laughter is without memory and desire, for he is emitting his shout into the world's present moment and wishes to know only that.”

“La honte n'a pas pour fondement une faute que nous aurions commise, mais l'humiliation que nous éprouvons à être ce que nous sommes sans l'avoir choisi, et la sensation insupportable que cette humiliation est visible de partout.”

“[B]ut pain doesn't listen to reason, it has it's own reason, which is not reasonable.”

“How could she feel nostalgia when he was right in front of her? How can you suffer from the absence of a person who is present? You can suffer nostalgia in the presence of the beloved if you glimpse a future where the beloved is no more”

“The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen”

“We don't know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don't understand our name at all, we don't know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration”

“If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and make it the object of our game; to turn it into a toy”

“A gesture cannot be regarded as the expression of an individual, as his creation (because no individual is capable of creating a fully original gesture, belonging to nobody else), nor can it even be regarded as that person's instrument; on the contrary, it is gestures that use us as their instruments, as their bearers and incarnations”

“The reign of imagology begins where history ends”

“In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make.”

“Remembering now all those farewells (fake farewells, worked-up farewells), Irena thinks: a person who messes up her goodbyes shouldn’t expect much from her re-unions.”

“We go through the present blindfolded... Only later, when the blindfold is removed and we examine the past, do we realise what we've been through and understand what it means. ”

“In Spanish añoranza comes from the verb añorar (to feel nostalgia), which comes from the Catalan enyorar, itself derived from the Latin word ignorare (to be unaware of, not know, not experience; to lack or miss), In that etymological light nostalgia seems something like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing. You are far away, and I don't know what has become of you. My country is far away, and I don't know what is happening there”

“I am not worthy of my suffering. A great sentence. It suggests not only that suffering is the basis of the self, its sole indubitable ontological proof, but also that it is the one feeling most worthy of respect; the value of all values.”

“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 beings.”

“There would seem to be nothing more obvious, more tangible and palpable than the present moment. And yet it eludes us completely. All the sadness of life lies in that fact. In the course of a single second, our senses of sight, of hearing, of smell, register (knowingly or not) a swarm of events and a parade of sensations and ideas passes through our head. Each instant represents a little universe, irrevocably forgotten in the next instant.”

“The basis of the self is not thought but suffering, which is the most fundamental of all feelings. While it suffers, not even a cat can doubt its unique and uninterchangeable self. In intense suffering the world disappears and each of us is alone with his self. Suffering is the university of ego-centrism.”

“Vê um jovem que se afasta da vida dela e se vai, parra sempre inacessível. Hipnotizada, nada pode fazer senão olhar esse pedaço da sua vida que se afasta, não pode senão olhá-lo e sofrer. Experimenta uma sensação inteiramente nova que se chama nostalgia.”

“Quanto mais vasto é o tempo que deixámos para trás de nós, mais irresistivel é a voz que nos convida ao regresso.”

“Für Sabina bedeutet Leben Sehen. Das Sehen wird durch zwei Pole begrenzt: das grelle, blendende Licht und das absolute Dunkel. […] Extreme markieren Grenzen, hinter denen das Leben zu ende geht, und die Leidenschaft für Extreme, in der Kunst wie in der Politik, ist eine verschleierte Todessehnsucht.”

“She was in the grip of an insuperable longing to fall. She lived in a constant state of vertigo. “Pick me up”, is the message of a person who keeps falling.”

“The purpose of the poetry is not to dazzle us with an astonishing thought, but to make one moment of existence unforgettable and worthy of unbearable nostalgia.”

“For existential mathematics, which does not exist, would probably propose this equation: the value of coincidence equals the degree of its improbability.”

“And Jakub realized that this child had done no harm, that he was not guilty of anything, and yet had been born with bad eyes and would have them forever. And he reflected further that what he had held against others was something given, something they came into the world with and carried with them like a heavy wire fence. He reflected that he had no privileged right to high-mindedness and that the highest degree of high-mindedness is to love people even though they are murderers.”