Quotes from Milan Kundera

I don't know whether my nation will perish and I don't know which of my characters is right. I invent stories, confront one with another, and by this means i ask questions. The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything.

Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation.

I have become so pessimistic that these days I'd even choose the truth over friendship.

There is nothing harder to explain than humor.

The tree of possibilities: life as it reveals itself to a man arriving, astonished, at the threshold of his adult life: an abundant treetop canopy filled with bees singing. And he thinks he understands why she never showed him the letters: she wanted to hear the murmur of the tree by herself, without him, because he, Jean-Marc, represented the abolition of all possibilities, he was the reduction, (even though it was a happy reduction) of her life to a single possibility.

The novel is born not of the theoretical spirit but of the spirit of humor.

Because love means renouncing strength.

People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.

You know,' he went on, 'novels are the fruit of the human illusion that we can understand our fellow man. But what do we know about each other?' 'Nothing,' said Bibi. 'True,' said Joujou. The professor of philosophy acquiesced with a nod of the head. 'The only thing we can do,' said Banaka, 'is to give an account of our own selves. Anything else is an abuse of power. Anything else is a lie.

The invention of printing formerly enabled people to understand one another. In the era of universal graphomania, the writing of books has an opposite meaning: everyone surrounded by his own words as by a wall of mirrors, which allows no voice to filter in from the outside.

What is unique about the 'I' hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person. All we are able to imagine is what makes everyone like everyone else, what people have in common. The individual 'I' is what differs from the common stock, that is, what cannot be guessed at or calculated, what must be unveiled, uncovered, conquered.

Because everyone applauds him as a nice, very cosmopolitan Scandinavian who's already forgotten all about the place he comes from.