If I hadn't met you, I'd certainly have fallen in love with him. Milan Kundera More Quotes by Milan Kundera More Quotes From Milan Kundera How goodness heightens beauty! Milan Kundera body-image goodness beauty Pain doesn't listen to reason, it has it's own reason, which is not reasonable Milan Kundera reasonable pain reason Graphomania (a mania for writing books) inevitably takes on epidemic proportions when a society develops to the point of creating three basic conditions: - (1) an elevated level of general well being which allows people to devote themselves to useless activities (2) a high degree of social atomization and , as a consequence, a general isolation of individuals; (3) the absence of dramatic social changes in the nation's internal life. Milan Kundera epidemics writing book The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. Milan Kundera tolerance attitude world But which was the real me? Let me be perfectly honest: I was a man of many faces. (p.33) Milan Kundera real faces men If we cannot accept the importance of the world, which considers itself important, if in the midst of that world our laughter finds no echo, we have but one choice: to take the world as a whole and make it the object of our game; to turn it into a toy Milan Kundera echoes laughter games Noise has one advantage. It drowns out words. Milan Kundera advantage noise True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Milan Kundera unbearable-lightness-of-being compassion animal How did the senator know that children meant happiness? Could he see into their souls? What if the moment they were out of sight, three of them jumped the fourth and began beating him up? Milan Kundera soul sight children The beauty of New York is unintentional; it arose independent of human design, like a stalagmite cavern. Milan Kundera independent design new-york When graves are covered with stones, the dead can no longer get out. But the dead can't go out anyway! What difference does it make whether they're covered with soil or stones? Milan Kundera differences stones doe Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor Milan Kundera unbearable-lightness-of-being metaphor love-is But if God is gone and man is no longer master, then who is master? Milan Kundera masters gone men Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. Milan Kundera judgment morality novel Modern stupidity means not ignorance but the nonthought of received ideas Milan Kundera ignorance mean ideas Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an esthetic end. Milan Kundera matter beauty art Kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence. Milan Kundera unbearable-lightness-of-being kitsch existence The novel is a territory where one does not make assertions; it is a territory of play and of hypotheses. Milan Kundera doe play writing No love can survive muteness. Milan Kundera no-love War and culture, those are the two poles of Europe, her heaven and hell, her glory and shame, and they cannot be separated from one another. When one comes to an end, the other will end also and one cannot end without the other. The fact that no war has broken out in Europe for fifty years is connected in some mysterious way with the fact that for fifty years no new Picasso has appeared either. Milan Kundera fighting war years