Quotes from Milan Kundera

Those who are fascinated by the idea of progress do not suspect that everything moving forward is at the same time bringing the end nearer and that joyous watchwords like forward and farther are the lascivious voice of death urging us to hasten to it. (If fascination with the word forward has become universal, isn't it mainly because death is already speaking to us from nearby?)

It's a vicious circle, people are going deaf because music is played louder and louder. But because they're going deaf it has to be played louder still.

to be absolutely modern means: never to question the content of modernity and to serve it as one serves the absolute, that is, without hesitation.

The brain appears to possess a special area which we might call poetic memory and which records everything that charms or touches us, that makes our lives beautiful.

Misery and pride. 'On horseback, death and a peacock'.

She refused at first, saying it would make a mockery of their love. She loved him too much to admit that what she thought of as unforgettable could ever be forgotten. Finally, of course, she did as he asked, but without enthusiasm. The notebooks showed it: they had many empty pages, and the entries were fragmentary.

How would I explain to him that I couldn't make peace with him? How would I explain that if I did I would immediately lose my inner balance? How would I explain that one of the arms of my internal scales would suddenly shoot upward? How would I explain that my hatred of him counterbalanced the weight of evil that had fallen on my youth? How would I explain that he embodied all the evils in my life? How would I explain to him that I needed to hate him?

She had an overwhelming desire to tell him, like the most banal of women, Don't let me go, hold me tight, make me your plaything, your slave, be strong! But they were words she could not say. The only things she said when he released her from his embrace was, 'You don't know how happy I am to be with you.' That was the most her reserved nature allowed her to express.

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

Extremes mean borders beyond which life ends, and a passion for extremism in art and in politics is a veiled longing for death.

Men grow old, the end draws near, each moment becomes more and more valuable, and there is no time to waste over recollections.

Too much faith is the worst ally