Milan Kundera Quotes

History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.

History happens all around us.

Every time we revise our history, we also revise the mythology of our history.

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

When I was a little kid, I told stories.

For me, when I 'discover' a story, there is a feeling of buoyancy and clarity, perhaps similar to early morning out on a prairie highway, when darkness lifts and reveals the outline of farmhouses and copses of trees in the distance.

When you walk out of your house in the morning, you don't know what you're going to see.

A lot of people may not read the history of their own country, but they carry on memories transmitted by previous generations. They're trying to achieve something, [they] have their mission and anger -- all this is fed by past experience of history.

… history is that which transforms documents into monuments

I think fiction recues history from its confusions.

I like to make history.

I know that it can be really difficult to read about your own life... in someone else's words.

Why are some things remembered and others forgotten? That is the theme I want to pursue about the Second World War.

Wherever a story comes from, whether it is a familiar myth or a private memory, the retelling exemplifies the making of a connection from one pattern to another: a potential translation in which narrative becomes parable and the once upon a time comes to stand for some renascent truth. This approach applies to all the incidents of everyday life: the phrase in the newspaper, the endearing or infuriating game of a toddler, the misunderstanding at the office. Our species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.

Only the story can continue beyond the war and the warrior. The story outlives the sound of the war drum... The story is our escort. Without it we are blind... It is the thing that sets us apart from cattle.

History is like a clock, it tells you your time of day.

People tend to forget that the word "history" contains the word "story".

We move so fast that memory is something we can only grasp

Daily dawns another day; I must up, to make my way. Though I dress and drink and eat, Move my fingers and my feet, Learn a little, here and there, Weep and laugh and sweat and swear, Hear a song, or watch a stage, Leave some words upon a page, Claim a foe, or hail a friend- Bed awaits me at the end.

Books mean all possibilities. They mean moving out of yourself, losing yourself, dying of thirst and living to your full. They mean everything.

The real difference between telling what happened and telling a story about what happened is that instead of being a victim of our past, we become master of it.

In a thousand years time this day will have existed for a thousand years to the day. And the ignorance of the whole world about what they've said today will have a date too.

I never wanted to be a celebrity; I never wanted to be famous. And in my daily life, I work really hard to not trade on it in any way. I am so desperately worried about anybody saying, "She cut in line," or "She took our table," or "She doesn't do her own grocery shopping." It's not like it's hard to be decent and respectful and well behaved. I do wait in line, and I do take the subway, and I do my own grocery shopping, and I do take the kids to school. But it almost doesn't matter to a certain segment of the populace.

A story must be told or there'll be no story, yet it is the untold stories that are most moving.

A garden that one makes oneself becomes associated with one’s personal history and that of one’s friends, interwoven with one’s tastes, preferences and character and constitutes a sort of unwritten autobiography.