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The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Book by Milan Kundera · 25 quotes · Laughter, Forgetting, Novel

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The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Quotes

“Because misogynists are the best of men.” All the poets reacted to these words with hooting. Boccaccio was forced to raise his voice: “Please understand me. Misogynists don’t despise women. Misogynists don’t like femininity. Men have always been divided into two categories. Worshipers of women, otherwise known as poets, and misogynists, or, more accurately, gynophobes. Worshipers or poets revere traditional feminine values such as feelings, the home, motherhood, fertility, sacred flashes of hysteria, and the divine voice of nature within us, while in misogynists or gynophobes these values inspire a touch of terror. Worshipers revere women’s femininity, while misogynists always prefer women to femininity. Don’t forget: a woman can be happy only with a misogynist. No woman has ever been happy with any of you!”

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“Do you think the symbol of the rhinoceros is there to create a comic effect?” Gabrielle asked. “Yes,” said Michelle, smiling the proud smile of someone who has found the truth. “You’re right,” said Gabrielle. Pleased with their own boldness, the two girls looked at each other, and the corners of their mouths quivered with pride. Then, all of a sudden, they emitted short, shrill, spasmodic sounds very difficult to describe in words.”

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“It takes so little, so infinitely little, for someone to find himself on the other side of the border, where everything - love, convictions, faith, history - no longer has meaning. The whole mystery of human life resides on the fact that it is spent in the immediate proximity of, and even in direct contact with, that border, that it is separated from it not by kilometers but by barely a millimeter.”

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“Per liquidare i popoli (..) si comincia col privarli della memoria. Si distruggono i loro libri, la loro cultura, la loro storia. E qualcun altro scrive loro altri libri, li fornisce di un'altra cultura, inventa per loro un'altra Storia. Dopo di che il popolo comincia lentamente a dimenticare quello che è e quello che è stato. E il mondo attorno a lui lo dimentica ancora più in fretta”

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“During the last ten years of his life my father gradually lost the power of speech. At first he simply had trouble calling up certain words or would say similar words instead and then immediately laugh at himself. In the end he had only a handful of words left, and all his attempts at saying anything more substantial resulted in one of the last sentences he could articulate: 'That's strange.' Whenever he said 'That's strange,' his eyes would express an infinite astonishment at knowing everything and being able to say nothing. Things lost their names and merged into a single, undifferentiated reality. I was the only one who by talking to him could temporarily transform that nameless infinity into the world of clearly named entities.”

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“You certainly remember this scene from dozens of films: a boy and a girl are running hand in hand in a beautiful spring (or summer) landscape. Running, running, running and laughing. By laughing the two runners are proclaiming to the whole world, to audiences in all the movie theaters: "We're happy, we're glad to be in the world, we're in agreement with being!" It's a silly scene, a cliche, but it expresses a basic human attitude: serious laughter, laughter "beyond joking." All churches, all underwear manufacturers, all generals, all political parties, are in agreement about that kind of laughter, and all of them rush to put the image of the two laughing runners on the billboards advertising their religion, their products, their ideology, their nation, their sex, their dishwashing powder.”

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“She wants to have her notebooks so that the flimsy framework of events, as she has constructed them in her school notebook, will be provided with walls and become a house she can live in. Because if the tottering structure of her memories collapses like a clumsily pitched tent, all that Tamina will be left with is the present, that invisible point, that nothingness moving slowly toward death.”

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“A delicate trace of a smile appeared on Passer’s face. Jan knew that smile well. it was not a joyous or an approving smile, but a smile of tolerance. They had always been far apart in their views, and in the rare moments when their differences became too visible, they would smile that smile to assure each other that their friendship was not in danger. 295 When things are repeated, they lose a fraction of their meaning. Or more exactly, they lose, drop by drop, the vital strength that gives them their illusory meaning. 295-6 It takes so little, a tiny puff of air, for things to shift imperceptibly, and whatever it was that a man was ready to lay down his life for a few seconds earlier seems suddenly to be sheer nonsense. 297 Whenever her mother-in-law had wanted something from them, she would weep. Weeping was her way of blaming them, and there was nothing more aggressive than her tears. 114 I calculate that two or three new fictional characters are baptized here on earth every second. 109 We shall flee rest, we shall flee sleep, We shall outrun dawn and spring And we shall shape days and seasons To the measure of our dreams. 94 All mysticism is excessive. The mystic must not be afraid of ridicule if he wants to go to the limits, the limits of humility or the limits of sensual pleasure. 80”

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“On crie qu'on veut façonner un avenir meilleur, mais ce n'est pas vrai. L'avenir n'est qu'un vide indifférent qui n'intéresse personne, mais le passé est plein de vie et son visage irrite, révolte, blesse, au point que nous voulons le détruire ou le repeindre. On ne veut être maître de l'avenir que pour pouvoir changer le passé. On se bat pour avoir accès aux laboratoires où on peut retoucher les photos et récrire les biographies et l'Histoire.”

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“All his memories of her were like that: They had come back together by streetcar from the apartment where they first made love. (Mirek noted with distinct satisfaction that he had completely forgotten their coitions, that he was unable to recall even a single moment of them.) More robust, taller than he (he was small and frail), she sat on a corner bench in the jolting streetcar, her face sullen, closed, surprisingly old. When he asked her why she was so silent, she told him she had not been satisfied with their lovemaking. She said he had made love to her like an intellectual. In the political jargon of those days, the word “intellectual” was an insult. It indicated someone who did not understand life and was cut off from the people.”

Page 6
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“È stato allora che ho capito il significato magico del cerchio. Quando si è allontanati da una fila, è ancora possibile reinserirsi. La fila è una formazione aperta. Ma il cerchio si richiude e non ci si può tornare. Non per caso i pianeti si muovono in cerchio, e la pietra che se ne stacca si allontana inesorabilmente, spinta dalla forza centrifuga. Simile a un meteorite staccatosi da un pianeta, io sono precipitato dal cerchio e non ho finito, ancora oggi, di cadere.”

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“Those who are fascinated by the idea of progress do not suspect that everything moving forward is at the same time bringing the end nearer and that joyous watchwords like "forward" and "farther" are the lascivious voice of death urging us to hasten to it. (If fascination with the word "forward" has become universal, isn't it mainly because death is already speaking to us from nearby?)”

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“They got into a conversation. What intrigued Tamina were his questions. Not their content, but the simple fact that he was asking them. My God, it had been so long since anyone had asked her about anything! It seemed like an eternity! Only her husband had kept asking her questions, because love is a continual interrogation. I don’t know of a better definition of love.”

Page 223
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“Smrt ima dva vida: ona je nebivanje, ali i strašna stvarna okolnost leša. [...] Biti leš, to je nepodnošljiva uvreda. Još prije nekoliko sekundi biti ljudsko biće koje je branilo svoj stid, posvećenost golotinje i intimitet, a zatim tek sekunda smrti da bi naše tijelo odjednom bilo na raspolaganju bilo kome, da ga se može razgolititi, razrezati, pregledavati mu utrobu gadljivo začepljena nosa zbog njezinog smrada, gurnuti u hladnjak ili u vatru.”

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