Milan Kundera Quotes

I look at the past and I see myself.

That's a part of me going back to what I used to do.

You realize yourself when you start reflecting - because I don't live in the past, although your past is so much a part of what you are - that you can't ignore it. But I don't look at scrapbooks.

When I look back at the 1980s I pinch myself. Did I really do all that?

I love my friends and my past, and it's made me who I am.

Sitting on the floor, I'd replay the past in my head. Funny, that's all I did, day after day after day for half a year, and I never tired of it. What I'd been through seemed so vast, with so many facets. Vast, but real, very real, which was why the experience persisted in towering before me, like a monument lit up at night. And the thing was, it was a monument to me.

We all have appointments with the past.

After all, memory may be the only thing on earth we can truly manipulate to serve us, so we don't have to look back at ourselves in the receding past and think, What an arsehole!

Remembering our past, carrying it around with us always, may be the necessary requirement for maintaining, as they say, the wholeness of the self. To ensure that the self doesn’t shrink, to see that it holds on to its volume, memories have to be watered like potted flowers, and the watering calls for regular contact with the witnesses of the past, that is to say, with friends. They are our mirror; our memory; we ask nothing of them but that they polish the mirror from time to time so we can look at ourselves in it.

When I look at pictures when I was younger, I do the quintessential cringe.

I go on the Internet and look at old pictures of myself, because it is the best reminder of how far I have come and where I do not want to be.

I must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all.

I find myself thinking more about the past as I get older... maybe because there's just more of it to think about. At the same time, I'm less haunted by it than I was as a younger person. I guess that's probably the ideal: to reach a point where you have access to all of your memories, but you don't feel victimized by them.

It has been an ache and a joy both to look over this big shoulder of mine at all my yesterdays.

I think I can see more clearly now - about how the pattern of past experiences has shaped who I am and the characters I have played - and I'm grateful for that.

It is always nice to reflect on how one started.

I believe we all grow because we share our experiences and our problems. We all have our intimate times. Why not share them?

I keep a diary when I have time to. I always know that I'm either having a great time or I'm very busy when there are three weeks of nothing in my diary. But I like to look back because in ten years to the day I can know where I was and what I was doing, and that's a nice feeling.

I am not caused by my history-my parents, my childhood and development. These are mirrors in which I may catch glimpses of my image.

When you look in the mirror what do you see? Do you see the real you, or what you have been conditioned to believe is you?

We only have the past that we have. Not all of our deeds were incorrect.

I wish I had a talking book that told me how to act and look, a talking book that contained keys to past and present memories

These days I live in three worlds: my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which trigger memories from the past

There are parts of me I only recognize from photographs.

There were things in my past which I have not liked. But all the things of which I was proud will remain.