Milan Kundera Quotes About Language
-
Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.
→ -
Because beyond their practical function, all gestures have a meaning that exceeds the intention of those who make them; when people in bathing suits fling themselves into the water, it is joy itself that shows in the gesture, notwithstanding any sadness the divers may actually feel. When someone jumps into the water fully clothed, it is another thing entirely: the only person who jumps into the water fully clothed is a person trying to drown; and a person trying to drown does not dive headfirst; he lets himself fall: thus speaks the immemorial language of gestures.
→ -
Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood.
→
Related Authors
-
Philip Roth Novelist -
Josef Skvorecky Writer -
Umberto Eco Essayist -
Friedrich Nietzsche Philologist -
Lawrence Durrell Novelist -
Albert Camus Author -
Gabriel Garcia Marquez Novelist -
Franz Kafka Writer -
Philip Kaufman Film director -
Vaclav Havel Former President of Czechoslovakia -
Marguerite Duras Writer -
Ernest Hemingway Author -
Emile M. Cioran Philosopher -
Vladimir Nabokov Novelist -
Mario Vargas Llosa Writer -
Haruki Murakami Writer -
Italo Calvino Journalist -
Fyodor Dostoevsky Novelist -
Gunter Grass Novelist -
Bohumil Hrabal Writer