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" To be a writer does not mean to preach a truth, it means to discover a truth. "
Milan Kundera
Preach
Discover
Mean
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" Without realizing it, the individual composes his life according to the laws of beauty even in times of greatest distress. "
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" 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. "
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" The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. "
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" Nudity is the uniform of the other side... nudity is a shroud. "
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" Those who consider the Devil to be a partisan of Evil and angels to be warriors for Good accept the demagogy of the angels. Things are clearly more complicated. "
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" Let us consider the critic, therefore, as a discoverer of discoveries. "
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" 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. "
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" The worth of a human being lies in the ability to extend oneself, to go outside oneself, to exist in and for other people. "
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" The sound of laughter is like the vaulted dome of a temple of happiness. "
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" True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. "
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" There are no small parts. Only small actors. "
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" Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another. "
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" He took over anger to intimidate subordinates, and in time anger took over him. "
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" Every change of scene requires new expositions, descriptions, explanations. "
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" A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality. "
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" Optimism is the opium of the people. "
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" No matter how much we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition. "
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" Eroticism is like a dance: one always leads the other. "
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" Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy. "
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" Without the meditative background that is criticism, works become isolated gestures, historical accidents, soon forgotten. "
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" No act is of itself either good or bad. Only its place in the order of things makes it good or bad. "
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" Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it. "
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" 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. "
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" 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. "
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" Mysticism and exaggeration go together. A mystic must not fear ridicule if he is to push all the way to the limits of humility or the limits of delight. "
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