You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange.
Interpretation
True affection between people goes beyond mere words and cannot be quantified by conversation alone.
This quote by Milan Kundera emphasizes that the depth of emotional connection and affection between individuals transcends the superficiality of verbal communication. It highlights the idea that genuine feelings and relationships are not solely determined by how much we talk to each other, but rather by the quality and mutual understanding that exists beneath the words spoken.
In practice
In a discussion about the importance of non-verbal communication in relationships.
Which doesn't mean, of course, that I'd stopped loving her, that I'd forgotten her, or that her image had paled; on the contrary; in the form of a quiet nostalgia she remained constantly within me; I longed for her as one longs for something definitively lost.
Facts mean little compared to attitudes. To contradict rumor or sentiment is as futile as arguing against a believer's faith in the Immaculate Conception. You have simply become a victim of faith, Comrade Assistant.
While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and sharing motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older, like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them.
Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.
To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace.
Sensuality is the total mobilization of the senses: an individual observes his partner intently, straining to catch every sound.
We all have incredible relationships to what we eat, to what we don't eat, to what we've eaten since childhood and what we were fed, to what food means to us. And so I find it a really powerful tool in storytelling and in opening people's hearts and their minds.
Adults should not weep, I knew. They did not have mothers who would comfort them.
When my father came out to his mom, my grandmother said, 'You waited for your father to die; why couldn't you have waited for me to die?' I knew then that I never want to contribute to the corrosiveness of wanting someone to stay hidden.
Perhaps the depth of love can be calibrated by the number of different selves that are actively involved in a given relationship.
It's hard to make strangers care about the good things in your life.
You always think that a bolt of lightning is going to strike and your parents will magically change into the people you wish they were, or back into the people they used to be.
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