Milan Kundera Quotes

I like people who have the capacity to forget. I think that to forget is a good thing. Forgetting is good. But sometimes I cannot. For me, I cannot.

The liar often suffers from amnesia. Amnesia is the silence of the unconscious.

We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness.

Of what significance are the things you can forget.

The man who lies asleep will never waken fame, and his desire and all his life drift past him like a dream, and the traces of his memory fade from time like smoke in air, or ripples on a stream.

Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence.

When people quote sketches to me, half the time I don't know what they're talking about so I have to sort of go, aha, yes, oh yep, I remember that and lie my way out of it.

It is lost, lovely child, somewhere in the ragbag that I laughingly refer to as my memory.

Illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory.

There is nothing that makes a man more self-satisfied than a poor memory.

The names are the first things to go, after the breath has gone, and the beating of the heart. We keep our memories longer than our names.

Human beings have the incredible capacity for denial. I think they do. And although it's really hard to believe, I have my doubts. But my feeling is that first they have to convince themselves. First they have to justify this stuff to themselves and if they can do that, even for just the moment that it's coming out their mouth, then they can kind of mouth it with kind of believable sincerity, even if some of us.

One look at each other and it was immediately understood that they both needed a clean slate,,, The obliteration of memory.

The name of the author is the first to go followed obediently by the title, the plot, the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of, as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain, to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.

The memory of most men is an abandoned cemetery where lie, unsung and unhonored, the dead whom they have ceased to cherish. Any lasting grief is reproof to their neglect.

Life cannot go on without much forgetting.

Wherever you go you will find people lying to you, and as your awareness grows, you will notice that you also lie to yourself. Do not expect people to tell you the truth because they also lie to themselves. You have to trust yourself and choose to believe or not to believe what someone says to you.

"We're going to be okay." Here's the thing about being a spy: sometimes all you have are your lies. They protect your cover and keep your secrets, and right then I needed to believe that it was true even when all the facts said otherwise.

Oblivion is not to be hired.

There's a brief moment when you first wake up, where you have no memories. A blissful blank slate, a happy emptiness.

Emily and I have now reached the time in life when not only do we lie about our ages, we forget what we've said they are.

The truth doesn't always set you free; people prefer to believe prettier, neatley wrapped lies

In the memory of the dead all chronological differences are effaced.

If you tell the truth, then you don't have to have a good memory