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 #7
What Goethe had written to a woman unknown to him was beautiful and sad, yearning and sensual, lively and wise, and the student was certain that such beautiful words had never before been addressed to any woman. He thought of Kristyna and desired her infinitely. Poetry had cast a cloak woven of the most sublime words over her ridiculous clothes. She had been turned into a queen. (V. "Queen".16)
Goethe has a way with words that can actually turn a sow's ear into a silk purse—and that's just what he does for poor, provincial Kristyna. The student is embarrassed by Kristyna's gold tooth and tacky clothes, but Goethe (who's never even seen her) convinces the young man that an aspiring poet needs just such a woman to help keep him real. The student swallows this hook, line, and sinker.
Quote #8
Her father was born on Cernokostelecka Avenue. That was under Austria-Hungary. When her mother married her father and moved in there, it was Marshal Foch Avenue. That was after the 1914-1918 war. Tamina spent her childhood on Stalin Avenue, and it was on Vinohrady Avenue that her husband picked her up to take her to her new home. And yet it was always the same street, they just kept changing its name, brainwashing it into a half-wit. (VI.1.6)
Kundera is preoccupied with shaping (and reshaping) history, and especially by the process of erasure. Here, he illustrates how effectively new political regimes mark the lives of private citizens by doing something as simple as renaming a street. Funny, you'd think that Tamina would be able to remember more of her life simply by recalling the name the street had that year...
Quote #9
It was an unbearable insult to become a corpse. One moment you are a human being protected by modesty, by the sacrosanctity of nakedness and intimacy, and then the instant of death is enough to put your body suddenly at anyone's disposal—to undress it, to rip it open, to scrutinize its entrails, to hold one's nose against its stench, to shove it into the freezer or into the fire. (VI.12.4)
Tamina recognizes that she doesn't fear death for the same reasons that most people do. It's not the whole nonexistence thing that freaks her out—it's the body stuff. She's an intensely private person (think about those notebooks), especially where her body is concerned, so it's not much of a surprise that she'd attach all her death fears to fears of nakedness and being turned into an object.