The Book of Laughter and Forgetting Transformation Quotes

How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph), with the exception of Part V, which runs (Part#. "Short Title". Paragraph). Part V has no numbered chapters—only title headings.

Quote #4

Whenever she sat facing a man, she would use his head as material for sculpture: gazing intently at him, she would imagine remaking the contours of the face, giving him a darker complexion and putting warts and freckles on it, reducing the ear's size, coloring the eyes blue. (IV.4.7)

Tamina lives so entirely in the past with the memories of her dead husband that she can't even bear to see other men as individuals. Instead, she practices turning every man's face into her husband's. As time goes on, it gets harder for her to do this: Tamina realizes that the image of her husband in her mind's eye is slipping even as the present keeps trying to press in on her. This is an unacceptable change for Tamina. Why? Because the present holds no meaning for her, except the promise of slipping into the future and bringing her closer to death.

Quote #5

She realized that what gave her written memories their meaning and worth was that they were intended for her alone. As soon as they lost that quality, the intimate tie binding her to them would be cut, and she would be able to read them no longer with her own eyes but only with the eyes of readers perusing a document about some other person. Then even she who had written them would become for her some other person, an outsider. (IV.15.3)

Tamina can think of nothing else but retrieving her personal notes from Prague and will do (and actually does do) almost anything to secure them. It's not just about having some nice memories from her marriage; it's about a right to privacy for her intimate thoughts. There is something sacred and serious for her in those pages, since they are the chronicle of her life with her husband.

She knows that the pages won't have the same meaning for others, that they can't value them in the way that she does. When she realizes that others must have already seen the notebooks, Tamina's whole perspective on them changes. The notebooks feel "dirty" to her, like they've been spoiled by prying eyes.

Quote #6

The impression Kristyna created against the backdrop of a small town, with its butchers, mechanics, and pensioners, was entirely different in Prague, the city of pretty students and hairdressers. With her ridiculous beads and her discreet gold tooth...she seemed to personify the negation of that youthful feminine beauty in jeans who had been cruelly rejecting him for months. (V. "Compromise". 2)

Kristyna loses the luster she once had back in her hometown when she appears out of her context. For the young student, this is an unwelcome change, and it makes him regret not only inviting her to his place in Prague, but ever having had an affair (of sorts) with her in the first place. It takes the highfalutin' words of the great poet Goethe to convert Kristyna back into a desired object for the student. We're kind of glad he gets what he deserves in the end.