Quotes & Sayings About Milan

Do Chinese dragons even eat people?" "She lives in the Bay Area," I say severely. "She eats a Westernized diet. — Courtney Milan

And I loved her so much I couldn't conceive of ever parting from her; true, we never talked about marriage, but at least was asbolutely serious about marrying her one day — Milan Kundera

He looks at Mama out of the corner of his eye, again surprised by how little she is. As if all of her life has been a slow process of shrinkage.
But just what is that shrinkage?
Is it the real shrinkage of a person abandoning his adult dimensions and starting on the long journey through old age and death toward distances where there is only a nothingness without dimension? — Milan Kundera

But just make someone who has fallen in love listen to his stomach rumble, and the unity of body and soul, that lyrical illusion of the age of science , instantly fades away. — Milan Kundera

Youth is terrible: it is a stage trod by children in buskins and a variety of costumes mouthing speeches they've memorized and fanatically believe but only half understand. And history is terrible because it so often ends up a playground for the immature; a playground for the young Nero, a playground for the young Bonaparte, a playground for the easily roused mobs of children whose simulated passions and simplistic poses suddenly metamorphose into a catastrophically real reality. — Milan Kundera

I'd have to say the Seychelles, because I adore being in tropical places. However, Paris and Milan are also special to me. Every city has something special that attracts me. — Candice Swanepoel

But when Edward kissed Frederica Marshall, something terrible happened - something that had never happened in a lifetime of kisses.
He didn't see an end.
He wasn't going to want a sweet farewell in a few weeks' time. He wouldn't walk away with a light heart. He was going to want more and more - more kisses, more of her, again and again. — Courtney Milan

In the world of eternal return the weight of unbearable responsibility lies heavy on every move we make. — Milan Kundera

It was like coming home to a place that he held dear and finding that the wood had burnt to the ground and the house was in ruins. — Courtney Milan

The body was a cage, and inside that cage was something which looked, listened, feared, thought and marveled; that something, that remainder left over after the body had been accounted for, was the soul. — Milan Kundera

There are moments in life when a man retreats defensively, when he must give ground, when he must surrender less important positions in order to protect the more important ones. But should it come to the very last, the most important one, at this point a man must halt and stand firm if he doesn't want to begin life all over again with idle hands and a feeling of being shipwrecked. — Milan Kundera

Miranda, how in God's name did you end up here?"
"Well," Miranda said. "It's a sweet tale, about kittens and puppies and rainbows and love. — Courtney Milan

If it were possible to raise the penis by means of a simple command, then sexual excitement would have no place in the world. — Milan Kundera

(God) being the old man invented in order to, and with whom to, hold long conversations. — Milan Kundera

It follows, then, that the aesthetic ideal of the categorical agreement with being is a world in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist. This aesthetic ideal is called kitsch. — Milan Kundera

Sebastian will never fight wars, but it's because of people like him that the rest of us don't have to fight as many of them. He makes everyone around him more than what they are. — Courtney Milan

He looks at houses, chateaus, forests, and thinks about the countless generations who used to see those things and who are gone now; and he understands that everything he is seeing is oblivion; pure oblivion, the oblivion whose absolute state will soon be achieved, the moment he himself is gone. And again I think about the obvious idea (that astoundingly obvious idea) that everything that exists (nation, thought, music) can also not exist. — Milan Kundera

I know who you are. He stared into the darkness and wished those words away. Instead, they hung about him, unsaid and yet still ringing in his ears. She didn't think he was his father. He wanted her to know who he was. And he wanted to know her back. — Courtney Milan

When someone is young, he is not capable of conceiving of time as a circle, but thinks of it as a road leading forward to ever-new horizons; he does not yet sense that his life contains just a single theme; he will come to realise it only when his life begins to enact its first variations. — Milan Kundera

Is it a thorny question of ethics? Or is it the sort of ethical question where the right choice is easy, but the unethical answer is too tempting? — Courtney Milan

A person who thinks should not try to persuade others to his belief; that is what puts him on the road to a system; on the lamentable road of the "man of conviction"; politicians like to call themselves that; but what is a conviction? It is a thought that has come to a stop, that has congealed, and "the man of conviction" is a man restricted. — Milan Kundera

I do believe you would have cut the rope. — Courtney Milan

Love is a battle," said Marie-Claude, still smiling. "And I plan to go on fighting. To the end."
Love is a battle?" said Franz. "Well, I don't feel at all like fighting." And he left. — Milan Kundera

Looking out over the courtyard at the dirty walls, he realized he had no idea whether it was hysteria or love. — Milan Kundera

Kitsch is the inability to admit that shit exists — Milan Kundera

Homo sentimentalis [ ... ] a man who has raised feelings to a category of value. As soon as feelings are seen as value, everyone wants to feel; and because we all like to pride ourselves on our values, we have a tendency to show off our feelings. — Milan Kundera

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

Mesmerized, all she can do is watch this piece of her life move off; all she can do is watch it and suffer. She is experiencing a brand-new feeling called nostalgia. That feeling, that irrepressible yearning to return, suddenly reveals to her the existence of the past, the power of the past, of her past; in the house of her life [ ... ] from now on her existence will be inconceivable without these feelings. — Milan Kundera

The only person who had ever really interrogated her was her husband, and that was because love is a constant interrogation. — Milan Kundera

Those boobs of yours are ubiquitous - like God! — Milan Kundera

Every one of my novels could be entitled The Unbearable Lightness of Being or The Joke or Laughable Loves; the titles are interchangeable, they reflect the small number of themes that obsess me, define me, and unfortunately, restrict me. Beyond these themes, I have nothing else to say or write. — Milan Kundera

Just imagine living in a world without mirrors. You'd dream about your face and imagine it as an outer reflection of what is inside you. And then, when you reached forty, someone put a mirror before you for the first time in your life. Imagine your fright! You'd see the face of a stranger. And you'd know quite clearly what you are unable to grasp: your face is not you. — Milan Kundera

The history of music is mortal, but the idiocy of the guitar is eternal. — Milan Kundera

Extremes mean borders beyond which life ends ... and a passion for extremism is a veiled longing for death. — Milan Kundera

From the top of the staircase she sees the London train, modern and elegant, and she tells herself again: Whether it's good luck or bad to be born onto this earth, the best way to spend a life here is to let yourself be carried along, as I am moving at this moment, by a cheerful, noisy crowd moving forward. — Milan Kundera

MARGARET HAD SEEN ASH cheerfully powerful, as talkative as a jaybird. She'd seen him silently powerful while he was listening to those around her. She didn't like seeing him vulnerable. It made her feel odd inside - hotly angry on his behalf, and enraged that someone had made him feel that way. — Courtney Milan

Young is the one that plunges in the future and never looks back. — Milan Kundera

Huzzah." Free met his gaze with a flat stare. "Crime! Right now that crime is blackmail, but it won't be blackmail much longer."
"No? How do you figure?"
"With luck and a good amount of arsenic ... ?" She gave him a smile of her own. "Soon it will be: 'Huzzah! Murder!' Now there's a cause that deserves my exclamation point. — Courtney Milan

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. — Milan Kundera

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

Miss Fairfield had a gift for taking a beautiful concept and then marring it beyond all recognition. — Courtney Milan

Are you sleep walking through life? When you move towards your dreams with open eyes and a conscious mind.. then you truly wake up. — Milan Ljubincic

Mankind's real moral test, a test so radical and so deep that it escapes our gaze, is probably the one of its relations with those that are the most at its mercy; the Animals. — Milan Kundera

If you aren't the chairman of Manchester United, Real Madrid or AC Milan, I'll get back to you later. — Joe Kinnear

Tomas turned the key and switched on the ceiling light. Teraza saw two beds pushed together, one of them flanked by a bedside table and a lamp. Up out of the lampshade, startled by the overhead light, flew a large nocturnal butterfly that began circling the room. The strains of the piano and violin rose up weakly from below. — Milan Kundera

He was down and out, the Catholics took him in, and before he knew it, he had faith. So it was gratitude that decided the issue, most likely. Human decisions are terribly simple. — Milan Kundera

As she uttered the words of the prayer, she glanced up at him as if he were God Himself. He watched her with growing pleasure. In front of him was kneeling the directress, being humiliated by a subordinate; in front of him a naked revolutionary was being humiliated by prayer; in front of him a praying lady was being humiliated by her nakedness.
This threefold image of degradation intoxicated him and something unexpected suddenly happened: his body revoked its passive resistance. Edward was excited!
As the directress said, 'And lead us not into temptation,' he quickly threw off all his clothes. When she said, 'Amen,' he violently lifted her off the floor and dragged her onto the couch. — Milan Kundera

Bradenton reminded him of an old farmer, walking the perimeter of his property every day, testing the fences and peering suspiciously at his neighbors, making sure that his side and their side were clearly delineated. It had taken Oliver years to learn his lesson: keep quiet and let men like Bradenton test the fences. It wouldn't do them any good, and if you were careful, one day you'd be in a position to buy their whole damned farm. And so Oliver held his tongue and smiled. — Courtney Milan

You're perfectly right. There's no two ways about it. When you leave, it will slay me. — Courtney Milan

Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring
it was peace. — Milan Kundera

Oh, dear." Free looked down, fluttering her eyelashes demurely. "Is my punctuation showing once more? — Courtney Milan

Loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away. — Milan Kundera

Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman). — Milan Kundera

I'm afraid I might make a fool of myself over him. I'm not even sure he would notice if I did. — Courtney Milan

Why would I take a conventional wife, when I could have an extraordinary one? — Courtney Milan

Miss Fairfield," he said quietly, "I am not your enemy. Stop treating me as one." Her heart slammed in her breast. "I have no enemies." "That, Miss Fairfield, is bollocks, and you know it. You have only enemies. — Courtney Milan

I have become so pessimistic that these days I'd even choose the truth over friendship. — Milan Kundera

There was only a language of families, a tongue woven from a lifetime of shared experiences. Its vocabulary consisted of gestures and curt sentences, incomprehensible to all outsiders. Inside, it wasn't difficult to translate at all. — Courtney Milan

When he's like this, Miss Lowell," Mark offered from his seat on the sofa, "I usually take it upon myself to stamp out in a rage."

"Must I stamp? Or can I sweet out gracefully?" "By all means, sweep. — Courtney Milan

The marquess held the weapon out, as formally as if he were passing a sword.
Soberly, Ned accepted it. He placed the sacrificial citrus on the table in front of him, and then with one careful
incision, eviscerated it. He speared deep into its heart, his
hands steady, and then cut it to pieces. Jenny allotted herself one short moment of wistful sorrow for her afterdinner treat gone awry as the juice ran everywhere.
"Enough." She reached out and covered his hand midstab.
"It's dead now," she explained gravely.
He pulled his hand away and nodded. Lord Blakely took back his knife and cleaned it with a handkerchief.
Jenny studied the corpse. It was orange. It was pulpy. It
was going to be a mess to clean up. Most importantly, it gave her an excuse to sit and think of something mystical to say - the only reason for this exercise, really. Lord Blakely
demanded particulars. But in Jenny's profession, specifics were the enemy. — Courtney Milan

When I am at Rome I fast as the Romans do; when I am at Milan I do not fast. So likewise you, whatever church you come to, observe the custom of the place, if you would neither give offence to others, nor take offence from them. — Ambrose

The humble histories of hearts cannot be brushed aside forever by the great events of nations. — Milan Kundera

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

Your boy here-" Ware jerked his head in angry indication "can't explain himself worth a damn."
That;s hardly news to me. Nonethelss," Gareth said, "I can't allow you to kill him. His death would be a terrible inconvenience for me."
Ware snorted. "If this is a same of his behavior, his death couldn't be so inconvenient as his life. — Courtney Milan

A person finds it distasteful to hear his life recounted with a different interpretation from his own. — Milan Kundera

It is a tragicomic fact that our proper upbringing has become an ally of the secret police. ( ... ) The "Tell the truth!" imperative drummed into us so automatically that we feel ashamed of lying even to a secret policeman. — Milan Kundera

At a time when history made its way slowly, the few events were easily remembered and woven into a backdrop, known to everyone, before which private life unfolded the gripping show of its adventures. Nowadays, time moves forward at a rapid pace. Forgotten overnight, a historic event glistens the next day like the morning dew and thus is no longer the backdrop to a narrator's tale but rather an amazing adventure enacted against the background of the over-familiar banality of private life. — Milan Kundera

And I felt fear. Fear of that bleak horizon, fear of that destiny. I felt my soul shriveling, I felt it retreating, and I was frightened by the thought that it could not escape its encirclement. — Milan Kundera

What part of your duty am I?"
He squeezed her hand. "You're the ray of sun at the center of the storm. — Courtney Milan

Even painful memories are ties that bind. — Milan Kundera

It was as though she has found refuge inside a shell and the only sound she could hear was the sea of an inimical world. — Milan Kundera

Homer never wondered whether, after their many hand-to-hand struggles, Achilles or Ajax still had all their teeth. — Milan Kundera

Almost from childhood, she knew that a concentration camp was nothing exceptional or startling but something very basic, a given into which we are born and from which we can escape only with the greatest of efforts. — Milan Kundera

Leroy's reasoning is dry as a razor, and Chantal agrees: love as an exaltation of two individuals, love as fidelity, passionate attachment to a single person - no, that doesn't exist. And if it does exist, it is only as self-punishment, willful blindness, escape into a monastery. She tells herself that even if it does exist, love ought not to exist, and the idea does not maker her bitter, on the contrary, it produces a bliss that spreads throughout her body. She thinks of the metaphor of the rose that moves through all men and tells herself that she has been living locked away by love and now she is ready to obey the myth of the rose and merge with its giddy fragrance. — Milan Kundera

It means what you are, wanting what you want and going after it without a sens od shame. People are slaves to rules. — Milan Kundera

Being a woman is a fate Sabina did not choose. What we have not chosen we cannot consider either to our merit or our failure. Sabina believed that she had to assume to correct attitude to her unchosen faith. To rebel against being born a woman seemed as foolish to her as taking pride in it. — Milan Kundera

The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists' discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish. — Milan Kundera

It was idealism that made him so angry. He expected too much out of life. — Milan Kundera

Now what was tiring had disappeared and only the beauty remained.
Saturday found him for the first time strolling alone through Zurich, breathing in the heady smell of his freedom. New adventures hid around each corner. The future was again a secret. — Milan Kundera

Every situation is of man's making and can only contain what man contains. — Milan Kundera

But was it love? The feeling of wanting to die beside her was clearly exaggerated: he had seen her only once before in his life! Was it simply the hysteria of a man, who, aware deep down of his inaptitude for love, felt the self-deluding need to simulate it? — Milan Kundera

Actually, he had always preferred the unreal to the real. — Milan Kundera

This is the real and the only reason for friendship: to provide a mirror so the other person can contemplate his image from the past, which, without the eternal blah-blah of memories between pals, would long ago have disappeared. — Milan Kundera

You can call me your friend if you like, but I think of you when I stroke myself. When last I checked, that points to feelings that are decidedly more than friendly. — Courtney Milan

His voice was rough when he spoke again. "So beat me to flinders," he said. "Win. Overmatch me, Minnie. And when we're alone ... "
His fingers touched her chin lightly.
"When we're alone," he whispered, "look up."
He could have tilted her chin, forcing her to do so. But his forefinger remained warm and steady on her face. He waited, and in the end, Minnie couldn't help herself. She looked up. — Courtney Milan

He knew he tended toward gloom. It made him consider blood poisoning and heart attacks when someone else might see a touch of indigestion. Those carefully considered worst-case scenarios made him a good doctor, but they also made him feel like a dark little raincloud.
When Lydia Charingford was around, though, he felt like a smiling dark little raincloud. — Courtney Milan

When his eyes rested on her, he stopped. He'd been smiling before, in a friendly fashion. But what lit his face when he saw her was more than a smile, more than a grin. It was as if someone had thrown aside the curtains of a sickroom on a glorious morning, to let sunlight spill into every darkened corner. — Courtney Milan

In order to make the novel into a polyhistorical illumination of existence, you need to master the technique of ellipsis, the art of condensation. Otherwise, you fall into the trap of endless length. — Milan Kundera

The sadness meant: we are at the last station. The happiness meant: we are together. The sadness was form, the happiness content — Milan Kundera

Because misogynists are the best of men." All the poets reacted to these words with hooting. Boccaccio was forced to raise his voice: "Please understand me. Misogynists don't despise women. Misogynists don't like femininity. Men have always been divided into two categories. Worshipers of women, otherwise known as poets, and misogynists, or, more accurately, gynophobes. Worshipers or poets revere traditional feminine values such as feelings, the home, motherhood, fertility, sacred flashes of hysteria, and the divine voice of nature within us, while in misogynists or gynophobes these values inspire a touch of terror. Worshipers revere women's femininity, while misogynists always prefer women to femininity. Don't forget: a woman can be happy only with a misogynist. No woman has ever been happy with any of you! — Milan Kundera

He could not quite understand what had happened. he began to sense an aura of hitherto unknown happiness emanating from them — Milan Kundera

Because people who decline organized leisure activities are deserters from the great common struggle against boredom, and they deserve neither attention nor helmets. — Milan Kundera

It was fascinating to watch her spin the tale. She'd adjusted her accent yet again, adding just a twitch of country. She looked up at him with just the right amount of girlish adoration. As if they were deeply in love and barely beginning to discover one another.
He couldn't help looking back with the same expression. He wasn't dissembling. — Courtney Milan

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

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

All lovers unconsciously establish their own rules of the game, which from the outset admit of no transgression. — Milan Kundera

We might also call vertigo the intoxication of the weak. Aware of his weakness, a man decides to give in rather than stand up to it. He is drunk with weakness, wishes to grow even weaker, wishes to fall down in the middle of the main square in front of everybody, wishes to be down, lower than down. — Milan Kundera

The reign of imagology begins where history ends — Milan Kundera

The characters in my novels are my own unrealised possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. — 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