War and culture, those are the two poles of Europe, her heaven and hel — Milan Kundera

"Do you realize that people dont know how to read Kafka simply because they want to decipher him? Instead of letting themselves be carried away by his unequaled imagination, they look for allegories — and come up with nothing but clichés: life is absurd (or it is not absurd), God is beyond reach (or within reach), etc. You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself."

"The light that radiates from the great novels time can never dim, for human existence is perpetually being forgotten by man and thus the novelists discoveries, however old they may be, will never cease to astonish."

"Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. The morality that stands against the ineradicable human habit of judging instantly, ceaselessly, and everyone; of judging before, and in the absence of, understanding. From the view­point of the novel’s wisdom, that fervid readiness to judge is the most detestable stupidity, the most pernicious evil."

"Dogs are our link to paradise. They dont know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring — it was peace."

"Nothing is more repugnant to me than brotherly feelings grounded in the common baseness people see in one another."

"A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novels only morality."

"How seldom, Friend! a good great man inherits Honour or wealth, with all his worth and pains! It sounds like stories from the land of spirits, If any man obtain that which he merits, Or any merit that which he obtains.   . For shame, dear Friend! renounce this canting strain! … Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends! Hath he not always treasures, always friends, The good great man? Three treasures, and , And , regular as infants breath; And three firm friends, more sure than day and night, , his , and the Angel ."

"He who loves is not ashamed before men of what he does for God, neither does he hide it through shame though the whole world should condemn it."

"Shamino: (when the player clicks repeatedly on a cat) Bloody cats!"

"A cloud was on the mind of men, and wailing went the weather, Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul when we were boys together. Science announced nonentity and art admired decay; The world was old and ended: but you and I were gay; Round us in antic order their crippled vices came — Lust that had lost its laughter, fear that had lost its shame."

"And then it happened. Suddenly, shamelessly, and without warning, as it must in all musical comedies, they were struck by... a love song."

"Prisoner in Castle British dungeon: "Shamino, speak up man!"