Milan Kundera - The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

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For the first few seconds, she was afraid he would throw her out because of the crude noises she was making, but then he put his arms around her. She was grateful to him for ignoring her rumbles, and she kissed him passionately, her eyes misting.

Milan Kundera
We can regard the gulag as a septic tank used by totalitarian kitsch to dispose of its refuse.

Milan Kundera
In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions. It follows, then, that the true opponent of totalitarian kitsch is the person who asks questions. A question is like a knife that slices through the stage backdrop and gives us a look at what lies hidden behind it.

Milan Kundera
In the love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body.

Milan Kundera
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.

Milan Kundera
Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of great distress.

Milan Kundera
But is not an event in fact more significant and noteworthy the greater the number of fortuities necessary to bring it about?

Milan Kundera
When we ignore the body, we are more easily victimized by it.

Milan Kundera
Sabina's initial inner revolt against Communism was aesthetic rather than ethical in character. What repelled her was not nearly so much the ugliness of the Communist world (ruined castles transformed into cow sheds) as the mask of beauty it tried to wear — in other words, Communist kitsch.

Milan Kundera
The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us.

Milan Kundera
No, vertigo is something other than the fear of falling. It is the voice of emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.

Milan Kundera
"Love is a battle," said Marie-Claude, still smiling. "And I plan to go on fighting. To the end."

Milan Kundera
It is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty.

Milan Kundera
When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object. In the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme.

Milan Kundera