“Yes, it's a well-known fact about you: you're like death, you take everything.”
Work
Laughable loves is a collection of stories that first appeared in print in Prague before 1968, but then was banned. The seven stories are all concerned with love, or rather with the complex erotic games and strategems employed by women and especially men as they try to come to terms with needs ad impulses that can start a terrifying train of events. Sexual attraction is shown as a game that often turns sour, an experience that brings with it painful insisghts and releases uncertainty, panic, vanity and a constant need for reassurance.
Quotes
Showing 1-6 of 6
Milan Kundera
Canonical work source
“Yes, it's a well-known fact about you: you're like death, you take everything.”
“He looked at her and tried to discover behind her lascivious expression the familiar features that he loved tenderly. It was as if he were looking at two images through the same lens, at two...”
“I know, brother, that you are a straightforward man, and that you pride yourself on it. But put one question to yourself: why in fact should one tell the truth? What obliges us to do it? And...”
“The girl was grateful to the young man for every bit of flattery; she wanted to linger for a moment in its warmth and so she said, 'You're very good at lying.' 'Do I look like a liar?' 'You...”
“She was aware that in love even the most passionate idealism will not rid the body's surface of its terrible, basic importance.”
“So she stood naked in front of the young man and at this moment stopped playing the game.”