Milan Kundera Quotes

If you will read again what is written, you will see how it was.

Writing and reading fiction is, I think, a human effort to make sense of the world.

I don't think there's anything wrong with someone having to read a poem twice. Or even a book.

Judgment is contained in the act of trying to understand.

The answers you get from literature depend on the questions you pose.

Be sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to find yours.

We are not only what we read. We are how we read.

To know the world, one must construct it

We can never be quite clear whether we are referring to the world as it is or to the world as we see it.

a good reader makes a good book

Learning how to be a good reader is what makes you a writer.

To read is to translate, for no two persons' experiences are the same. A bad reader is like a bad translator: he interprets literally when he ought to paraphrase and paraphrases when he ought to interpret literally.

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means.

Reading enables us to see with the keenest eyes, to hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time.

Whoever is going to listen to the philosophers needs a considerable practice in listening.

I did not get my picture of the world by satisfying myself of its correctness; nor do I have it because I am satisfied of its correctness. No: it is the inherited background against which I distinguish between true and false.

If one of my kids reads a book for school and I can have a conversation with her about the book and I sense that she gets what the book is about, then it doesn't really matter to me if she gets an A on the paper.

Sir, I have found you an argument; but I am not obliged to find you an understanding.

I found I wasn't asking good enough questions because I assumed I knew something.

This is that which I think great readers are apt to be mistaken in; those who have read of everything, are thought to understand everything too; but it is not always so. Reading furnishes the mind only with materials of knowledge; it is thinking that makes what we read ours. We are of the ruminating kind , and it is not enough to cram ourselves with a great load of collections:;; unless we chew them over again, they will not give us strength and nourishment.

To see the world is to judge the judges.

I never write with any kind of message, and I don't think that this book, 'Goodbye, Stranger' has a message in the capital M form of the word but I do hope it makes people ask themselves questions about what they think.

Fact explains nothing. On the contrary, it is fact that requires explanation.

The sentences in the book of providence are sometimes long, and you must read a great way before you understand their meaning.

I teach people to question their thinking, and this changes their world.