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.
Interpretation
Great novels hold timeless truths about human existence that continue to amaze us, regardless of their age.
This quote by Milan Kundera reflects on the enduring power of great literature. It suggests that the insights provided by novelists about the human experience are timeless and continue to resonate with readers, even as society evolves and forgets past truths. The light of their discoveries illuminates aspects of existence that may be overlooked or forgotten, highlighting the importance of literature in understanding our humanity across generations.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of reading, one might quote this to emphasize the timeless value of literature.
Which doesn't mean, of course, that I'd stopped loving her, that I'd forgotten her, or that her image had paled; on the contrary; in the form of a quiet nostalgia she remained constantly within me; I longed for her as one longs for something definitively lost.
Facts mean little compared to attitudes. To contradict rumor or sentiment is as futile as arguing against a believer's faith in the Immaculate Conception. You have simply become a victim of faith, Comrade Assistant.
While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and sharing motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older, like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them.
Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.
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.
Sensuality is the total mobilization of the senses: an individual observes his partner intently, straining to catch every sound.
There are books so alive that you're always afraid that while you weren't reading, the book has gone and changed, has shifted like a river; while you went on living, it went on living too, and like a river moved on and moved away. No one has stepped twice into the same river. But did anyone ever step twice into the same book?
I have been attacked in Turkey more for my interviews than for my books. Political polemicists and columnists do not read novels there.
In novels, and American novels in particular, it's not just about redemption, it's about forward movement and healing oneself. Americans are very big on getting better.
I assume I don't need an introduction.
Quite, quite,' she thought with a little sigh. 'It's always like this in their adventures. To save and be saved. I wish somebody would write a story sometime about the people who warm up the heroes afterward.
To Southerners like my mother, 'Gone With the Wind' was not just a book; it was an answer, a clenched fist raised to the North, an anthem of defiance.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.