The serial number of a human specimen is the face, that accidental and unrepeatable combination of features. It reflects neither character nor soul, nor what we call the self. The face is only the serial number of a specimen. – Milan Kundera
True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. – Milan Kundera
The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. – Milan Kundera
There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even ones own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels for someone, for someone, pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echos. – Milan Kundera