Quotes from Milan Kundera

She came from a land where revolutionary illusion had long since faded but where the thing he admired most in revolution remained: life on a large scale; a life of risk, daring, and the danger of death. Sabina had renewed his faith in the grandeur of human endeavour. Superimposing the painful drama of her country on her person, he found her even more beautiful.

Metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with.

The characters in my novels are my own unrealized 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 cirumvented. It is that crossed border (the border beyond which my own I ends) which attracts me most. For beyond that border begins the secret the novel asks about. The novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become.

Raised as we are on the mythology of the Old Testament, we might say that an idyll is an image that has remained with us like a memory of Paradise: life in Paradise was not like following a straight line to the unknown; it was not an adventure. It moved in a circle among known objects. Its monotony bred happiness, not boredom.

She saw her soul shinning through the features on her face.

Her image of it came entirely from what she had heard. Or read. Or received unconsciously from distant ancestors. And yet it lived within her.

a man has a right to fear dangers that are less than likely to occur.

necessity, weight, and value are three concepts inextricably bound: only necessity is heavy, and only what is heavy has value.

Her nascent love inflamed her sense of beauty.

Is it better to shout and thereby hasten the end, or to keep silent and gain thereby a slower death?

Not only have people stopped trying to be attractive when they are out among other people, but they are no longer even trying not to look ugly!

Murder simply hastens a bit what God will eventually see to on His own.