“People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.”

Czech and French novelist

Milan Kundera was a Czech and French novelist. He is known for his fiction and for a career shaped by exile, first in France and later through French citizenship. Kundera went into exile in France in 1975 and became a French citizen in 1981. His Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, and he was granted Czech citizenship in 2019.