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Milan Kundera — Portrait after a picture by Elisa Cabot (CC BY-SA 3.0), via Wikimedia Commons. This drawing is shared under the same licence.

The quotations of

Milan Kundera

Franco-Czechoslovak poet and novelist

1929–2023

7 quotes.

Dreaming is not merely an act of communication; it is also an aesthetic activity, a game of the imagination, a game that is a value in itself.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Pt. 2, ch. 16
- Sleep
Optimism is the opium of the people.
The Joke (1967), Pt. 3, ch. 3
- Comedy
- Hope
True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Pt. 7, ch. 2
- Morality
- Power
Chance and chance alone has a message for us… Only chance can speak to us.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Pt. 2, ch. 9
- Luck
No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches.
The Joke (1967), Pt. 6, ch. 18
- Laughter
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.
From The Art of the Novel, as quoted in “Here Be Dragons”, The Daily Telegraph (4 June 1988)
- Writing
What is unique about the “I” hides itself exactly in what is unimaginable about a person.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Five: Lightness and Weight, ch. 9
- Character

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