Milan Kundera Quotes

Because, as we know, almost anything can be read into any book if you are determined enough. This will be especially impressed on anyone who has written fantastic fiction. He will find reviewers, both favourable and hostile, reading into his stories all manner of allegorical meanings which he never intended. (Some of the allegories thus imposed on my own books have been so ingenious and interesting that I often wish I had thought of them myself.)

What art offers is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

People want Art. And they are given it. But the less Art there is in painting the more painting there is.

A book cannot apologize for what people may think it should be. It has to be authoritative.

I don't care about my "impact" - I only care about the theater as an art form and criticism as an act of writing.

I usually don't mind movies that people think go overboard because that's what art is all about. Art is about pushing us and making us examine ourselves.

One can do good things without being very much of a harmonist or a colourist. It is sufficient to have a sense of art - and this sense is doubtless the horror of the bourgeois.

A work of art is an echo chamber which repeats what people say about it.

Art is not made for anybody and is, at the same time, for everybody.

Art is difficult. It's not entertainment. There are only a few people who can say something about art - it's very restricted. When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not. Buying art is not understanding art.

Art is not the most precious manifestation of life. Art has not the celestial and universal value that people like to attribute to it. Life is far more interesting.

The only people who get paid what they're worth are people who don't follow the instruction book, who create art, who are innovative, who work without a map.

I liked working in advertising, but don't believe my taste in art, such as it is, was entirely formed by TV commercials. And I don't feel especially conflicted enjoying a Mantegna one day, a Carl Andre the next day and a brash student work the next.

My [singing] style really has no style, because I try to sing each number differently. I’ve always believed that if style takes precedent over the words and music, the audience get’s cheated. It’s like when people see a fine play or movie. They imagine themselves in the leading role. I want them to imagine that they’re singing - not just listening to someone else.

There is something wrong with a work of art if it can be understood by a policeman.

People understand the meaning of eating lies in the nourishment of the body only when they cease to consider that the object of that activity is pleasure. ...People understand the meaning of art only when they cease to consider that the aim of that activity is beauty, i.e., pleasure.

Spending money on art has always been frowned upon in this country - even earlier, when my and others' paintings cost almost nothing. Something is always more important. The people in charge are always peddling reasons that others seem to accept. Those who don't drink and aren't crazy, or who don't attract attention with how they behave in public, aren't noticed in art.

Those who are concerned with the arts are often asked questions, not always sympathetic ones, about the use or value of what they are doing. It is probably impossible to answer such questions directly, or at any rate to answer the people who ask them.

The worlds I paint leave a lot to engage the imagination by hinting at what lies beyond the four edges of the painting.

The better the book the more room for the reader.

If you're wandering the streets, talking in gibberish, nobody ever asks you to change anything about your art because there's no context for people to look at what you do.

The art isn't there to be purchased - it's there to be enjoyed.

In literature, you know only what you imagine