Милан Кундера цитаты

страница 4

„Мы испытываем стыд не потому, что совершаем ошибки, а потому, что наше унижение видят все.“

„Нет чувства одиночества или даже плохого самочувствия. Только его место в порядке делает их хорошими или плохими.“

„Счастье - жажда повторения.“

„Человек - это всего лишь то, что являет собой его образ.“

„Нет ничего труднее, чем заставить понять юмор.“

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

“A man who loses his privacy loses everything. And a man who gives it up of his own free will is a monster.”

“Living, there is no happiness in that. Living: carrying one’s painful self through the world.
But being, being is happiness. Being: Becoming a fountain, a fountain on which the universe falls like warm rain.”

“To be mortal is the most basic human experience, and yet man has never been able to accept it, grasp it, and behave accordingly. Man doesn't know how to be mortal. And when he dies, he doesn't even know how to be dead.”

“Looking out over the courtyard at the dirty walls, he realized he had no idea whether it was hysteria or love.”

“We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our emotions - love, antipathy, charity, or malice - and what part is predetermined by the constant power play among individuals.”

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

“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.”

“The novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become”

“The history of music is mortal, but the idiocy of the guitar is eternal.”

“Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out is mute. Only chance can speak to us. We read its message much as gypsies read the images made by coffee grounds at the bottom of the cup.”

“She is sadder and sadder, and for a man there is no balm more soothing than the sadness he has caused a woman.”

“All great novels, all true novels, are bisexual.”

“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.”

“The more vast the amount of time we've left behind us, the more irresistible is the voice calling us to return to it.”

“We can reproach ourselves for some action, for a remark, but not for a feeling, quite simply because we have no control at all over it.”

“Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).”

“Our dreams prove that to imagine - to dream about things that have not happened - is among mankind's deepest needs.”

“Pain doesn't listen to reason, it has its own reason, which is not reasonable.”

“Draw a line; draw a line that pleases you. And remember that it is not the artist's role to copy the outlines of things but to create a world of his own lines on paper." (pp.28-29)”

“People derived too much pleasure from seeing their fellow man morally humiliated to spoil that pleasure by hearing out an explanation.”

“You think that just because it's already happened, the past is finished and unchangeable? Oh no, the past is cloaked in multicolored taffeta and every time we look at it we see a different hue.”

“The river flowed from century to century, and human affairs play themselves out on its banks. Play themselves out to be forgotten the next day, while the river flows on.”

“Optimism is the opium of the people.”

“I think, therefore I am' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches.”

“The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented.”

“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! It is the second tear that makes kitsch kitsch.”

“Unlike the puerile loyalty to a conviction, loyalty to a friend is a virtue - perhaps the only virtue, the last remaining one.”

“I invent stories, confront one with another, and by this means I ask questions. The stupidity of people comes from having an answer to everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.”