All from Milan Kundera:
1.
“Happiness is the longing for repetition.”
2.
“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.”
3.
“We all need someone to look at us. we can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. the first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. the second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. they are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners. they are happier than the people in the first category, who, when they lose their public, have the feeling that the lights have gone out in the room of their lives. this happens to nearly all of them sooner or later. people in the second category, on the other hand, can always come up with the eyes they need. then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love. their situation is as dangerous as the situation of people in the first category. one day the eyes of their beloved will close, and the room will go dark. and finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. they are the dreamers.”
4.
“When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.”
5.
“Two people in love, alone, isolated from the world, that’s beautiful.”
6.
“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).”
7.
“There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless.”
8.
“But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.”
9.
“The goals we pursue are always veiled. A girl who longs for marriage longs for something she knows nothing about. The boy who hankers after fame has no idea what fame is. The thing that gives our every move its meaning is always totally unknown to us.”
10.
“Kitsch is the inability to admit that shit exists”
11.
“Love is a continual interrogation. I don’t know of a better definition of love.”
12.
“A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.”
13.
“And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself?”
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One of the many reasons that I admire Milan Kundera is that he tells the truth about life, the truth that most people on earth live in but dare not to admit.
A clean, well-lighted place. 