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Quotes by Czechoslovakian Authors
"When I came for the first time to the United States, visiting, I was absolutely fascinated by New York."
"Memories are doing funny things to us."
"The beauty of New York rests on a completely different base. It's unintentional. It arose independent of human design, like a stalagmitic cavern. Forms which are in themselves quite ugly turn up fortuitously, without design, in such incredible surroundings that they sparkle with a sudden wondrous poetry."
"I especially love French, Italian and Japanese cuisines."
"The events in the square, of course, made a deep impression on me and many other parents."
"For the first time in his life, sex is located away from all danger, away from conflict and drama, away from persecution, away from any accusation, away from worries; he has nothing to take care of, love is taking care of him, love as he's always wanted it and never had it: love-repose; love-oblivion; love-desertion; love-carefreeness; love-meaningless."
"Great God of the Ants, thou hast granted victory to thy servants. I appoint thee honorary Colonel."
"As long as I had easy access to psychedelics at the government-sponsored research project, most of my energy went into psychedelic sessions."
"Mother belonged to a realm of other creatures: smaller, lighter, more easily blown away."
"In the first day of the Soviet Army's arrival, I and the other comrades were isolated and then found ourselves here, not knowing anything... I can only conjecture what could have happened."
"I've found a place that would amaze you. People used to live there, but now it's all overgrown and no one goes there. Absolutely no one - only me... Just a little house and a garden. And two dogs."
"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."
"In Tereza's eyes, books were the emblems of a secret brotherhood. For she had but a single weapon against the world of crudity surrounding her: the novels. She had read any number of them, from Fielding to Thomas Mann. They not only offered the possibility of an imaginary escape from a life she found unsatisfying; they also had a meaning for her as physical objects: she loved to walk down the street with a book under her arm. It had the same significance for her as an elegant cane from the dandy a century ago. It differentiated her from others."
"I put my money in the bank: I have to think of life after modeling, when I'm not famous any more."
"If every second of our lives recurs an infinite number of times, we are nailed to eternity as Jesus was nailed to the cross. It is a terrifying prospect."
"History is the key to everything: politics, religion, even fashion."
"I certainly don't know if you could claim that every theft is wrong, but I'll prove to you that every theft is forbidden, by simply locking you up."
"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."
"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."
"I was now resolved to do everything in my power to defeat the system."
"I always give Lindsay so much credit for her tennis game, for her attitude, for her person, and because of how she deals with all the things. I don't think people give her enough credit for how well she's doing."
"I get out of the taxi and it's probably the only city which in reality looks better than on the postcards, New York."
"I have good anticipation, and good reaction to the the ball because I've played so many matches in my life."
"You know, I always do my best, no matter the quality of the film."
"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!"
"Consciousness after death demonstrates the possibility of consciousness operating independently of the body."
"Much melancholy has devolved upon mankind, and it is detestable to me that might will triumph in the end."
"The study of consciousness that can extend beyond the body is extremely important for the issue of survival, since it is this part of human personality that would be likely to survive death."
"If we can make some kind of adjustments, maybe in the game, to make it interesting and slow down the surfaces, then it will be more fun and more interesting."
"The human psyche shows that each individual is an extension of all of existence."
"Scepticism does not abolish the world, it turns it into questions."
"They didn't have the money to keep Christopher Lee long enough to play his scenes with me."
"The psyche of the individual is commensurate with the totality of creative energy. This requires a most radical revision of Western psychology."
"Not everything written on Kafka is Kafkology. How then to define Kafkology? By a tautology: Kafkology is discourse for Kafkologizing Kafka. For replacing Kafka with the Kafkologized Kafka."
"I want you to be weak. As weak as I am."
"No great movement designed to change the world can bear to be laughed at or belittled. Mockery is a rust that corrodes all it touches."
"The sound of laughter is like the vaulted dome of a temple of happiness."
"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."
"Metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory."
"You can't measure the mutual affection of two human beings by the number of words they exchange."
"Now, after the communist take-over in 1948, the amount of feature films produced dwindled to three a year, while the school was, you know, every year another three, four, five students."
"If an ordinary person is silent, it may be a tactical maneuver. If a writer is silent, he is lying."
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