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"But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?"
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"I didn't really escape that gravity until I moved 300 miles south to go to college at 18, where authorship no longer seemed something liable to induce vengeful punishment."
"A writer is congenitally unable to tell the truth and that is why we call what he writes fiction."
"Authorship of anything apart from God is nothing more than a tragedy in the making."
"An author in his book must be like God in the universe, present everywhere and visible nowhere."
"We are the products of editing, rather than of authorship."
"The first book I did - the first successful book - was a kind of a travel book, and publishers in Britain encouraged me to do more."
"Authors are sometimes like tomcats: They distrust all the other toms but they are kind to kittens."
"Many of the characters are fools and they're always playing tricks on meand treating me badly."
"But isn't it true that an author can write only about himself?"
Explore more quotes by Milan Kundera
"Damn! What did Ansermet, that most faithful friend, know about Stravinsky's poverty of heart? What did he, that most devoted friend, know about Stravinsky's capacity to love? And where did he get his utter certainty that the heart is ethically superior to the brain? Are not vile acts committed as often with the heart's help as without it? Can't fanatics, with their bloody hands, boast of a high degree of "affective activity"? Will we ever be done with this imbecile sentimental Inquisition, the heart's Reign of Terror?"
"Tereza knew what happens during the moment love is born: the woman cannot resist the voice calling forth her terrified soul, the man cannot resist the woman whose soul thus responds to his voice."
"The novel's spirit is the spirit of complexity. . . . The novel's spirit is the spirity of continuity . . . a thing made to last, to connect the past with the future."
"All the same, a seductive voice from afar kept breaking into her conjugal peace: it was the voice of solitude. She closed her eyes and listened to the sound of a hunting horn coming from the depths of distant forests. There were paths in those forests."
"It was futile to attack with reason the stout wall of irrational feelings that, as is known, is the stuff of which the female mind is made."
"Given the nature of the human couple, the love of a man and a woman is a priori inferior to that which can exist (at least in the best instances) in the love between man and dog...It is a completely selfless love."
"People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past."
"Without much ardor but quite unmistakably, she was writhing her hips as if she were dancing. When he was very close, he saw' her gaping mouth: she was yawning lengthily, insatiably: the great open hole was rocking gently atop die mechanically dancing body. Jean-Marc thought: she's dancing and she's bored.He reached the seawall: down below, on the beach, he saw men with their heads thrown back releasing kites into the air. They were doing it with passion, and Jean-Marc recalled his old theory: there are three kinds of boredom: passive boredom: the girl dancing and yawning; active boredom: kite-lovers; and rebellious boredom: young people burning cars and smashing shop windows."
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