Milan Kundera Quotes

Death is something we really understand extremely well.

How can a people who do not mean to understand death hope to understand love, and who will sound the alarm?

I hope I am not too repetitive. However, coming to terms with death is part of the general human situation.

I'm just observing the world. I was born into it, like you were, and then I found out there were some really disturbing aspects to being alive, like the fact that you weren't going to be alive forever - that bothered me.

We are all of us resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to.

You're on earth. There's no cure for that.

Death is a part of all our lives. Whether we like it or not, it is bound to happen. Instead of avoiding thinking about it, it is better to understand its meaning. We all have the same body, the same human flesh, and therefore we will all die. There is a big difference, of course, between natural death and accidental death, but basically death will come sooner or later. If from the beginning your attitude is 'Yes, death is part of our lives,' then it may be easier to face.

But death we are, and death we've always been.

So the first thing: become aware of death. Think about it, look at it, contemplate it. Do not be afraid, do not escape the fact. It is there and you cannot escape it! It has come into existence with you.

Life is a forced state! I am surprized that we live, rather than that our friends die.

I think about dying every day, because I can't stop thinking about living.

We’re all tourists, sort of. Life is tourism, sort of. As far as I’m concerned, the dinosaurs still hold the lease on this godforsaken rock.

I always thought that as long as man is mortal, he will never be relaxed.

Man reckons with immortality, and forgets to reckon with death.

Man, the creature who knows he must die, who has dreams larger than his destiny, who is forever working a confidence trick on himself, needs an ally. Mine has been tobacco.

All say, ‘how hard it is that we have to die’ -- a strange complaint to come from the mouths of those who have had to live.

The Human Condition being, basically, that we’re alive and have access to beauty, can even erratically create it, but will someday be dead and will not.

What is bad? What is good? What should one love, what hate? Why live, and what am I? What is lie,what is death? What power rules over everything?" he asked himself. And there was no answer to any of these questions except one, which was not logical and was not at all an answer to these questions. This answer was: "You will die--and everything will end. You will die and learn everything--or stop asking.

We're just animals, creatures smart enough and unlucky enough to have figured out we're alive, and we're going to die without ever knowing any purpose. We can pretend all we want and we can wish all we want, but that basic existential fact remains—we can't know.

There is one vast human experience that confronts us so formidably that we cannot pretend to overlook it. There is no solution to death. There is no means whatever whereby you or I, by taking thought, can solve this difficulty in such a manner that it no longer exists.

Your desires are immense, almost infinite. Because of your desires life becomes a competition, and wherever there is competition, there is anxiety and angst; and at the end everybody is aware deep down there is death.

It seems people spend the majority of their lives believing they're dying, with the only consolation being that at one point they get to be right.

If thou expect death as a friend, prepare to entertain it; if thou expect death as an enemy, prepare to overcome it; death has no advantage, but when it comes a stranger.

Dying men think of funny things-and that's what we all are here, aren't we? Dying men.

Life is a disease; and the only difference between on man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives.