Milan Kundera Unbearable Quotations

On the surface, an intelligible lie; underneath, the unintelligible truth.

Yes, if you're looking for infinity, just close your eyes!

Einmal ist keinmal, says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.

In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.

The purpose of the poetry is not to dazzle us with an astonishing thought, but to make one moment of existence unforgettable and worthy of unbearable nostalgia.

she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane for the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others.

The only relationship that can make both partners happy is one in which sentimentality has no place and neither partner makes any claim on the life and freedom of the other.

In the realm of totalitarian kitsch, all answers are given in advance and preclude any questions.

Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.

Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo.

There are things that can be accomplished only by violence. Physical love is unthinkable without violence.

Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor

Kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence

Perhaps all the questions we ask of love, to measure, test, probe, and save it, have the additional effect of cutting it short.

Why don't you ever use your strength on me?" she said. Because love means renouncing strength," said Franz softly.

And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.

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 thing 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.

A single metaphor can give birth to love.

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

Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.

We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.

loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.

A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.

Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.

In the mind of a woman for whom no place is home the thought of an end to all flight is unbearable.

But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.