Milan Kundera Quotes

I think that Ionesco's greatest weapon is that he's able to make us laugh at the darkest corners of our souls.

My favorite playwright is probably Samuel Beckett, and he was always laughing at the abyss.

Even if things are as bad as they could possible be, and as meaningless, then matters of truth are themselves indifferent; we may as well please our sensibilities and, with as much spirit as we can muster, go out with a buck and a wing.

The concept of absurdity is something I'm attracted to.

When I was young I read 'L'Etranger' by Camus, and it made me aware of the strangeness of life.

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

In the nineteenth century the problem was that God is dead. In the twentieth century the problem is that man is dead.

Life itself is pretty funny when you realize how absurd it can be.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

The universe is chaotic and meaningless, and it's good to laugh about it. That's my stance on life, actually. Some people go through life grinding their teeth, suffering and banging their head against the wall. I'm glad that's not the reaction that occurs in me.

If you examine any aspect of the human condition long enough, you really do have to start laughing at it. Because the business of being human is kind of ridiculous.

I think that laughter and death are closely related: comedy is the quintessential human reaction to the fear of death. It's probably linked with the fact that we are the only animals who know we must die.

“God,” she cried, “what is love? Man seeking his own head? The human head, so rented by misery that even the teeth weigh! She couldn't tell me the truth because she had never planned it; her life was a continual accident, and how can you be prepared for that? Everything we can't bear in this world, some day we find in one person, and love it all at once.”

The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world. In other words, I can only recommend perspective and distance.

The absurd is essentially a divorce. It lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation.

Let's go." "We can't." "Why not?" "We're waiting for Godot.

I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, and that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied.

Life is a game in which the player must appear ridiculous.

In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. In it, there is no value, - and if there were, it would be of no value.

To be bitter is to attribute intent and personality to the formless, infinite, unchanging and unchangeable void. We drift on a chartless, resistless sea. Let us sing when we can, and forget the rest.

A man who has become conscious of the absurd is for ever bound to it.

Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable.

I think life is a jape. Yours, mine, everyone's

L'absurde est la notion essentielle et la premie' re ve? rite? . The absurd is the fundamental idea and the first truth.