top of page
"A novel does not assert anything, a novel poses questions... The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude."
Standard
Customized
Exlpore more Literature quotes

"And she never could remember and ever since that day what Lucy means by a good story is a story which reminds her of the forgotten story in the Magician's Book."

"It is usually unbearably painful to read a book by an author who knows way less than you do, unless the book is a novel."

"Good characters in fiction are the very devil. Not only because most authors have too little material to make them of, but because we as readers have a strong subconscious wish to find them incredible."

"I don't know where people got the idea that characters in books are supposed to be likable. Books are not in the business of creating merely likeable characters with whom you can have some simple identification with. Books are in the business of creating great stories that make you're brain go ahhbdgbdmerhbergurhbudgerbudbaaarr."

"Which is my favourite author??You have mistake it must be authors I have a lot of favourite authors, which is my book, opps again a mistake, it must be books..."

"Tell me of your Willoughbys, Heathcliffs and Wickhams in literature and I will tell you I met them all."

"There are books which take rank in our life with parents and lovers and passionate experiences, so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative."

"I am not sure that the best way to make a boy love the English poets might not be forbid him to read them and then make sure that he had plenty of opportunities to disobey you."

"I read to know the past, I write to express my love for the future."

"I appreciate a book intended to be judged by its cover. The insincere readers are often weeded out while the sincere readers remain curious."
Explore more quotes by Milan Kundera

"For Sabina, living in truth, lying neither to ourselves nor to others, was possible only away from the public: the moment someone keeps an eye on what we do, we involuntarily make allowances for that eye, and nothing we do is truthful. Having a public, keeping a public in mind, means living in lies."

"He was looking for immensity. His life was hopelessly small, everything surrounding him was nondescript and gray. And death is absolute; it is indivisible and indissoluble. The presence of the girl was pathetic (a few caresses and a lot of meaningless words), but her absolute absence was infinitely grand; when he imagined a girl buried in a field, he suddenly discovered the nobility of pain and the grandeur of love. But it was not only the absolute but also bliss he was looking for in his dreams of death."

"Looking out over the courtyard at the dirty walls, he realized he had no idea whether it was hysteria or love."
bottom of page