Identity Milan Kundera Quotes & Sayings

A twinge of wonderment that might charm the most cynical of New York dance fans ... They raise the bar, and then they jump over it. — Jennifer Dunning

Autism was, and would long remain, a diagnosis in the eye of the beholder. — Caren Zucker

The eye: the window to the soul; the center of the face's beauty; the point where a person's identity is concentrated; but at the same time an optical instrument that requires constant washing, wetting, maintenance by a special liquid dosed with salt. So the gaze, the greatest marvel man possesses, is regularly interrupted by a mechanical washing action. — Milan Kundera

Policy makers beware: unless you are ready to admit that you are facing an essentially theological problem in the Middle East, do not go about prescribing solutions, for you may actually make matters worse - particularly by creating the false impression that economic, sociological, or political programs can fix what is, in fact, a delusion of faith — Robert Reilly

( ... ) the woman we love ought to swim as slowly as we do, she ought to have no past of her own to look back on happily. But when the illusion of absolute identity vanishes (the girl looks back happily on her past or swims faster), love becomes a permanent source of the great torment we call litost. — Milan Kundera

If they won't come to worship God in a church, something must be done. We have to instigate a nationwide search for a way to make it fun. — Paul McCartney

You love your music."
"I did when I was trying to shut everything out. Now I'm trying to let everything in. — Jennifer Echols

Nearly everyone has had a box of secret pain, shared with no one. Will [Hamilton] had concealed his well, laughed loud, exploited perverse virtues, and never let his jealousy go wandering [ ... ] He was always on the edge, trying to hold on to the rim of the family with what gifts he had - care, and reason, application. He kept the books, hired the attorneys, called the undertaker, and eventually paid the bills. The others didn't even know they needed him. — John Steinbeck

Darling, my darling, don't think that I don't love you or that I didn't love you, but it's precisely because I love you that I couldn't have become what I am today if you were still here. It's impossible to have a child and despise the world as it is, because that's the world we've put the child into. The child makes us care about the world, think about it's future, willingly join in its racket and its turmoils, take its incurable stupidity seriously. — Milan Kundera

Our only hope lies in the power of our love, generosity, tolerance and understanding and our commitment to making the world a better place for all ... — Muhammad Ali

When he told F. of his disgust at the eyelid's movement, he must have been sixteen. When he decided to study medicine, he must have been nineteen; by then, having already signed on to the contract to forget, he no longer remembered what he had said to F. three years before. Too bad for him. The memory might have alerted him, might have helped him see that his choice of medicine was wholly theoretical, made without the slightest self- knowledge.
Thus he studied medicine for three years before giving up with a sense of shipwreck. What to choose after those lost years? What to attach to, if his inner self should keep as silent as it had before? He walked down the broad outside staircase of the medical school for the last time, with the feeling that he was about to find himself alone on a platform all the trains had left. — Milan Kundera

Agnes subtracts from her self everything that is exterior and borrowed, in order to come closer to her sheer essence (even with the risk that zero lurks at the bottom of the subtraction). Laura's method is precisely the opposite: in order to make her self ever more visible, perceivable, seizable, sizeable, she keeps adding to it more and more attributes and she attempts to identify herself with them (with the risk that the essence of the self may be buried by the additional attributes). — Milan Kundera

He thought: that's certainly how it starts. One day a person puts his legs up on a bench, then night comes and he falls asleep. That's how it happens that one fine day a person joins the tramps and turns into one of them. — Milan Kundera

All of my favourite actors are American and I grew up watching American movies. It's weird I used to do a New Jersey accent in every audition in America, because I liked it. It's completely bizarre and everybody would ask: 'Where are you from?' And I would say: 'Oh, I'm from London!' — Robert Pattinson

The eye the point where a person's identity is concentrated. — Milan Kundera

There was no monster so fierce or so vulnerable as a man's ego. — Nora Roberts

Not everything written on Kafka is Kafkology. How then to define Kafkology? By a tautology: Kafkology is discourse for Kafkologizing Kafka. For replacing Kafka with the Kafkologized Kafka. — Milan Kundera

Who was the real me? I can only repeat: I was a man of many faces.

At meetings I was earnest, enthusiastic, and committed; among friends, unconstrained and given to teasing; with Marketa, cynical and fitfully witty; and alone (and thinking of Marketa), unsure of myself and as agitated as a schoolboy.

Was the last face the real one?

No. They were all real: I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn't know who I was or wanted to be. (I was frightened by the differences between one face and the next; none of them seemed to fit me properly, and I groped my way clumsily among them.) — Milan Kundera

Icarus burned because he flew during the day. He wanted the world to see. We fly in the darkness, where people are afraid to look. — J.J. McAvoy

Life is short, I have no time for drama. — Caroline Manzo

Without asking her permission, someone is trying to intrude her life, draw her attention, in short, to bother her. — Milan Kundera