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Quotes by Czechoslovakian Authors
"In any case, it seems to me that all over the world people nowadays prefer to judge rather than to understand, to answer rather than to ask, so that the voice of the novel can hardly be heard over the noisy foolishness of human certainties."
"Well, listen, you know, the Czech saying is, you know, when you are drowning you are grabbing even a little twig. That's what all Czechs were doing, grabbing for... with the hope for this little twig."
"Do you think that a doe in the jaws of a tiger feels less horror than you? People thought up the idea that animals don't have the same capability for suffering as humans, because otherwise they couldn't bear the knowledge that they are surrounded by a world of nature that is horror and nothing but horror." Paul was pleased that man was gradually covering the whole earth with concrete. It was as if he were watching a cruel murderess being walled up."
"A big element of what they regard as conformity is simply a desire to have an audience."
"The beliefs concerning reincarnation have great ethical impact on human life and our relationship to the world."
"The worst evil is - and that's the product of censorship - is the self-censorship, because that twists spines, that destroys my character because I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself."
"And everything is controlled and everybody is a member of some committee, because then their watchdogs placed in the committees can control everything, what this person says or how this person think(s), you know."
"We must have the time to create strict rules so that property is not sold by Communist managers for a low price. They often get payments under the table to sell to the first bidder. This does not build public support for a market economy."
"The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words, of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought."
"The novel is born not of the theoretical spirit but of the spirit of humor."
"In Irena's head the alcohol plays a double role: it frees her fantasy, encourages her boldness, makes her sensual, and at the same time it dims her memory. She makes love wildly, lasciviously, and at the same time the curtain of oblivion wraps her lewdness in an all-concealing darkness. As if a poet were writing his greatest poem with ink that instantly disappears."
"A novel that does not uncover a hitherto unknown segment of existence is immoral. Knowledge is the novel's only morality."
"If excitement is a mechanism our Creator uses for His own amusement, love is something that belongs to us alone and enables us to flee the Creator. Love is our freedom. Love lies beyond "Es Muss sein!"
"Because if you lived, as I did, several years under Nazi totalitarianism, and then 20 years in communist totalitarianism, you would certainly realize how precious freedom is, and how easy it is to lose your freedom."
"According to materialistic science, any memory requires a material substrate, such as the neuronal network in the brain or the DNA molecules of the genes."
"Einmal ist keinmal, says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all."
"First of all, whoever didn't want to be a member of this association or the other association, was branded, you know, like a dangerous individualist, you know, infected by the Western decadence, you know. So everybody joined."
"Let the planet be convulsed with exploding bombs, the country ravished daily by new hordes, all his neighbors taken out and shot - he could accept it all more easily than he dared to admit. But the grief implicit in Tereza's dream was something he could not endure."
"Business has only two functions - marketing and innovation."
"The top players talk more now, and we have more meetings. We're just trying to get things better. But we still need somebody who could make a difference."
"Art must always stand guard against stirring emotions that lie outside the aesthetic: sexual arousal, terror, disgust, shock."
"There is no roles. No one is keeping any roles. The drummer is also answering everybody and everything. So it is a constant conversation and communication between musicians on an extremely high level with extremely valuable material, motifs, and melodies."
"If consciousness can function independently of the body during one's lifetime, it could be able to do the same after death."
"Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life."
"Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good."
"People like me who were engaging in brinkmanship with the party economic bosses and the open dissidents who were being arrested were pursuing a common goal in different ways."
"I get out of the taxi and it's probably the only city which in reality looks better than on the postcards, New York."
"We will never remember anything by sitting in one place waiting for the memories to come back to us of their own accord! Memories are scattered all over the world. We must travel if we want to find them and flush them from their hiding places!"
"The history of music is mortal, but the idiocy of the guitar is eternal."
"Our historical experience teaches us that men imitate one another, that their attitudes are statistically calculable, their opinions manipulable, and that man is therefore less an individual (a subject) than an element in a mass."
"Individuals approaching death often experience encounters with their dead relatives, who seem to welcome them to the next world. These deathbed visions are authentic and convincing; they are often followed by a state of euphoria and seem to ease the transition."
"It was wonderful to play such a part, but I was disappointed with the picture."
"She blushed. It is a beautiful thing when a woman blushes; at that instant her body no longer belongs to her; she doesn't control it; she is at its mercy; oh, can there be anything more beautiful than the sight of a woman violated by her own body!"
"Without asking her permission, someone is trying to intrude her life, draw her attention, in short, to bother her."
"If I'm on location on some island, we usually get up at four in the morning to set up. By seven thirty, we're on the beach working until noon, then we rest. It's not exactly a vacation."
"I'm certainly not sorry that there were some things I missed. You may think you're missing something at that time but later when you look at it, you didn't miss anything."
"The children laughing without knowing why - isn't that beautiful?"
"I think talent is dangerous to have if you take it for granted. If you use it well and put hard work with it together, it's hard to catch that guy. And I think that's what you're seeing right now."
"There is a great advantage in training under unfavorable conditions. It is better to train under bad conditions, for the difference is then a tremendous relief in a race."
"I play a role in front of the cameras, just like in the movies."
"I especially love French, Italian and Japanese cuisines."
"For a trial is initiated not to render justice but to annihilate the defendant.Even when the trial is of dead people, the point is to kill them off a second time: by burning their books; by removing their names from the schoolbooks; by demolishing their monuments; by rechristening the streets that bore their names."
"I think it was the right time for me to retire because nowadays tennis is too incredibly fast and you can say that my style tennis went out of fashion."
"A number of cases have been reported in which a dying individual has a vision of a person about whose death he or she did not know."
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