Quotes from Milan Kundera

All at once I understood that it had only been my illusion that we ourselves saddle events and control their courses; the truth is that they aren't our stories at all, that they are foisted on us from somewhere outside; that in no way do they represent us; that we are not to blame for the strange paths they follow; that they are themselves directed from who knows where by who knows what strange forces.

This absurd jealousy, grounded as it was in mere hypotheses, proved that he considered her fidelity an unconditional postulate of their relationship. How then could he begrudge her her jealousy of his very real mistresses?

Everything he did, he did for Sabina, the way Sabina would have liked to see it done.

If Olga had been a little more foolish, she would have found herself quite pretty. But since she was an intelligent girl, she considered herself much uglier than she really was, for she was actually neither ugly nor pretty

The darkness was pure, perfect, thoughtless, visionless; that darkness was without end, without borders; that darkness was the infinite we each carry within us.

Einmal ist keinmal, says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all.

Her guilty conscience was as vague as original sin.

Looked at from the outside, I haven't experienced anything. Looked at from the outside! But I have a feeling that my experience inside is worth writing about and could be interesting to everybody.

Sabina once allowed herself to be taken along to a gathering of fellow emigres. As usual, they were hashing over whether they should or should not have taken up arms against the Russians. In the safety of emigration, they all naturally came out in favor of fighting. Sabina said: Then why don't you go back and fight?

Is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?

But the world was too ugly, and no one decided to rise up out of the grave.

A single metaphor can give birth to love. To love someone out of compassion means not really to love.