Everyone has the right to his lousy wine

‘I don’t like forcing happiness on people. Everybody has the right to his lousy wine, to his stupidity, and to his dirty old fingernails.’

– Milan Kundera, The Farewell Party: p. 125

 

A man whose actions are without consequences

He reflected about it with the equanimity of a man who believes his actions have been mere experiments without consequences in the real world.

– Milan Kundera, The farewell party: 169

[as an example of unexistentialism, and the type of disconnection one can sometimes feel.]

 

Telling people someone is dead

Since the day he buried her, he had always been uncomfortable when he had to inform someone of her death; as if by doing so he were betraying her in her most private privacy.

– Milan Kundera, Ignorance: 91

 

Kundera

It was grotesque: here she was prepared to give him everything, her virginity, and any sacrifice he could think up, and still she couldn’t bring herself to disobey a miserable school principal. Should she let herself be defeated by such pettiness? Her self disgust was unbearable and she wanted to get free of it at any cost; she wanted to reach some greatness in which her pettiness would disappear…

– Milan Kundera, Ignorance: 86