Milan Kundera Quotes

... the deep experience of the lonely climb on the mountain of success brings a wealth beyond power to compute. To you all suffering is understandable and your heart opens wide in sympathy.

I've learned that every single trial offers us a chance to either turn away from what we know to be true, or to stand strong in who we are...

There have been many people for whom limitations, failure, loss, or pain in whatever form turned out to be their greatest teacher. It taught them to let go of false self-images and superficial ego-dictated goals and desires. It gave them depth, humility and compassion. It made them more real.

After all it is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life.

I don't read anything about myself. As a child, there was something in me that was just instinctive. I want to be clear in my spirit, and I don't want to be blocked by things that get inside of you and kill you.

Silence, exile, cunning and so on... it's my nature to keep quiet about most things. Even the ideas in my work.

I found I am not an anarchistic form creator; I'm intuitive, and I'm trying to figure out a way to explore human fragility.

That's the way I try to live. I think it's the only way for human beings at this point in our evolution as souls, where everyone in their lifetime is going through stuff.

By the time you're 30, you know who you are inside. You learn to laugh at things you can't change; you learn to be yourself.

I guess I have a talent for humiliation, a place within me that experience can't reach, which is terrible in real life but something that comes in handy in writing. It seems as though humiliation has become a career for me.

If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.

What people don't understand is that how you are as an artist depends on how you are emotionally.

You feel different every day of your life. You just have to create your own space to survive, personally and professionally.

These days cry out, as never before, for us to pay attention, so we can move through them and get our joy and pride back.

The man who has no inner-life is a slave to his surroundings.

If poetry and the arts do anything, they can fortify your inner life, your inwardness.

It's a very hard thing for all of us to accept ourselves at all the different stages - the horrible side, the wonderful side, the adorable side - and who you are as a grownup. And then to bring what you learned as a child to that grownup: that is the magic of creativity.

After all the work I've done, I feel like I'm something of an emotion-smith. We have to tap into places on a daily basis that usually people only go in a rare occasion.

So for my own survival and my growth, as a soul, as an artist and as an emotional being, it was best that I assume an identity I didn't have to fight anyone over or that I have to constantly engage in constant tug of wars and just reinvent myself.

I feel like I learned that I am so much stronger than I ever thought I was, not just emotionally, but physically.

'Dum' is not about the bicep. It is about soul.

Sobriety has opened my mind and unlocked parts of me that I didn't even realize existed.

When I look back at the record and listen to it, I can sort of see where I was at when I was making it - these brief little moments, different places I was at emotionally.

I'm learning how strong I am, how resilient I am. I'm learning my weaknesses.

I think all human beings can surprise themselves when they are in situations where they are tested. That's when you see your true character coming out, and I was definitely tested.