About this quote

Notice who you are together when no one else is watching. If you and your partner can slow down and feel whole just being near each other, that is a real measure of connection. Try a concrete test: switch off phones for an evening and pay attention to small moments, like a shared laugh or how silence settles between you. Can you be content with that quiet? If you can, protect it and make time for it again.

When to use it

• After a 12-hour ER shift, I crawled into bed with my partner and mumbled Kundera's line to myself so I could stop thinking about the chaos at work.
• Two grad students in a tiny apartment, thesis drafts everywhere; one looks at the other and says, 'Kundera was right — this quiet between us is everything.'
• At my parents' 40th anniversary picnic, my dad squeezed my mum's hand and whispered that line while everyone else cheered around them.
• After I broke my ankle and stayed in a cramped rehab room, my partner sat with me through the night and I kept thinking of that sentence.