Oh lovers! be careful in those dangerous first days! once you've brought breakfast in bed you'll have to bring it forever, unless you want to be accused of lovelessness and betrayal.
Interpretation
Relationships require consistent care and attention, especially in the beginning.
This quote by Milan Kundera highlights the importance of sustaining romantic gestures and attentiveness in a relationship from the very start. It implies that initial actions, such as bringing breakfast in bed, set expectations that might become burdensome, as partners may believe that such gestures should continue indefinitely to prove love and commitment.
In practice
During a relationship seminar, a speaker might reference this quote to discuss the expectations set in the early days of a romance.
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.
It's kind of heartbreaking when I talk about it now, I still get very moved by the lack of opportunities that were available to myself and to the very few others who were Hispanic young actresses.
For it is mutual trust, even more than mutual interest that holds human associations together. Our friends seldom profit us but they make us feel safe. Marriage is a scheme to accomplish exactly that same end.
If you treat every person you meet as if he or she were the most important person in the world, you'll communicate that he or she is somebody - to you.
Dissensions between Muslim nations run at least as deep, if not deeper, than those nations' resentment of the West.
Ma's still nodding. "You're the one who matters, though. Just you." I shake my head till it's wobbling because there's no just me.
Too many women are forced to abort by poverty, by their menfolk, by their parents. A choice is only possible if there are genuine alternatives.
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