Flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee. by Milan Kundera

Flirting is a promise of sexual intercourse without a guarantee.

Milan Kundera

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Sad company is bad company. by Milan Kundera

Sad company is bad company.

bad-company company

Art arises from sources other than logic." (p.32) by Milan Kundera

Art arises from sources other than logic." (p.32)

logic source art

Is a novel anything but a trap set for a hero? by Milan Kundera

Is a novel anything but a trap set for a hero?

traps novel hero

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.

unbearable-lightness-of-being partners claims

Unlike the puerile loyalty to a conviction, loyalty to a friend is a virtue - perhaps the only virtue, the last remaining one.

virtue lasts loyalty

Kitsch causes two tears to flow in quick succession. The first tear says: How nice to see children running on the grass! The second tear says: How nice to be moved, together with all mankind, by children running on the grass!

nice running children

I have to lie, if I don't want to take madmen seriously and becom... by Milan Kundera

I have to lie, if I don't want to take madmen seriously and become a madman myself

madmen want lying

I cannot hate them because nothing binds me to them; I have nothi... by Milan Kundera

I cannot hate them because nothing binds me to them; I have nothing in common with them.

hate common

Beauty has long since disappeared. It has slipped beneath the surface of the noise, the noise of words, sunk deep as Atlantis. The only thing left of it is the word, whose meaning loses clarity from year to year.

noise long years

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.

unbearable-lightness-of-being overwhelming-desire strong

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.

unbearable birth giving

We don't know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don't understand our name at all, we don't know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.

humorous inspiration funny

[Kafka] transformed the profoundly antipoetic material of a highly bureaucratized society into the great poetry of the novel; he transformed a very ordinary story of a man who cannot obtain a promised job . . . into myth, into epic, into a kind of beauty never before seen.

epic jobs men

This was exactly what the girl had most dreaded all her life and had scrupulously avoided until now: lovemaking without emotion or love. She knew that she had crossed the forbidden boundary, but she proceeded across it without objections and as a full participant; only somewhere, far off in a corner of her consciousness, did she feel horror at the thought that she had never known such pleasure, never so much pleasure as at this moment--beyond that boundary.

consciousness emotion girl

Common European thought is the fruit of the immense toil of translators. Without translators, Europe would not exist; translators are more important than members of the European Parliament.

toil important europe

Listening to a news broadcast is like smoking a cigarette and cru... by Milan Kundera

Listening to a news broadcast is like smoking a cigarette and crushing the butt in the ashtray.

crush smoking listening

The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen

self numbers character

The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the assassination of Allende drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the war in the Sinai Desert made people forget Allende, the Cambodian massacre made people forget Sinai, and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten.

memories war people

I remember that the day I finished 'The Angels,' part three of 'The Book of Laughter and Forgetting', I was terribly proud of myself. I was sure that I had discovered the key to a new way of putting together a narrative.

laughter angel book

Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated.

warrior angel spiritual