Quotes from Bohumil Hrabal

la guardavo e mi si riempirono gli occhi di lacrime, non è che piangessi, avevo capito, avevo coscienza del fatto che dovevo farmi tatuare anch'io una barchetta così sul petto, che senza una barchetta come quella non potevo vivere, che quella barchetta doveva dare calore, che era l'emblema dell'anima, e che anch'io l'avrei avuta. Quella barchetta lì si può lavare?

And when I gave him the urn, he weighed it in his hand and declared she wasn't quite all there—she'd weighed a full one hundred and sixty-five pounds when she was alive—so he weighed her on a scale and then sat down and worked out that there ought to be another one and three-quarter ounces of her

To peer into the mass of wastepaper and find the spine and boards of a rare book has always been a special treat for me. Instead of going after it on the spot, I'll take a piece of steel wool and give the shaft a good rub, then have another look at the paper and check whether I have the strength to pull out the book and open it, and not until I decide I do have the strength will I pick it up, and even then it shakes in my hands like a bride's bouquet at the altar.

The New Man was not the victor, loud-mouthed and vain, but the man who was humble and solemn, with the beautiful eyes of a terrified animal. And so through the eyes of these lovers—because even married couples became lovers again with the danger of the front hanging over them—I learned to see the countryside, the flowers on the tables, the children at play, and to see that every hour is a sacrament.

I called it the Hotel in the Quarry, because something inside me had been broken and crushed and carted away.

They] turn their faces upward, and from the abyss of the Prague streets gaze at the strip of sky overhead, at the clouds, to see what time it really was, according to nature and not by the clock.

Dovevate starvene seduti a casa, sul culo...

The road I maintained and patched with rock I had to crush myself—that road resembled my own life.

When my eye lands on a real book and looks past the printed word, what it sees is disembodied thoughts flying through air, gliding on air, living off air, returning to air.

I asked Zden?k if there was something he wanted to tell me. But he didn't need to tell me anything, it was enough to have seen me and confirm that I was in the world, and to let me know that he missed me, just as I missed him.

living in a onetime kingdom where it was and still is a custom, an obsession, to compact thoughts and images patiently in the heads of the population, thereby bringing them ineffable joy and even greater woe; living among people who will lay down their lives for a bale of compacted thoughts.

as thousands of cobalt-colored flies swooped in thousands of wild nosedives, their metallic wings and bodies embroidering an immense tableau vivant made up of constantly shifting curves and splashes like the flow of paint in those gigantic Jackson Pollocks.

But just as a beautiful fish will occasionally sparkle in the waters of a polluted river that runs through a stretch of factories, so in the flow of old paper the spine of a rare book will occasionally shine forth, and if for a moment I turn away, dazzled, I always turn back in time to rescue it.

Every era carries in its womb a child in whom one may not only place one's hopes, but through whom and with whom it would be possible to go on living.

It was the kind of horse they have in mines—he must have worked underground somewhere because his eyes were so beautiful, the kind I would se in stokers and people who worked in artificial light all day or in the light of safety lamps and emerged from the pit or the furnace room to look up at the beautiful sky because to such eyes all skies are beautiful.

The stories in this collection represent the early results of Hrabal's discovery of what he came to call "total realism," the realization that the ordinary events of everyday life can be as magical as surrealism, and that straightforward accounts of people at work and in conversation can reveal more about who they are and the world they live in than attempts to portray their inner lives.

and my eyes open panic-stricken on a world other than my own, because when I start reading I'm somewhere completely different, I'm in the text, it's amazing, I have to admit I've been dreaming, dreaming in a land of great beauty, I've been in the very heart of truth.

It was the kind of horse they have in mines—he must have worked underground somewhere because his eyes were so beautiful, the kind I would see in stokers and people who worked in artificial light all day or in the light of safety lamps and emerged from the pit or the furnace room to look up at the beautiful sky because to such eyes all skies are beautiful.

Attraverso i libri ho appreso che i cieli non sono affatto umani e che un uomo che sa pensare, anche lui non è umano, non che non lo voglia, ma ciò contrasta col giusto modo di pensare.

Once, for three hundred crowns, I became a saint for an instant: I bought up all the goldfinches, then released them from my hand. Oh, what a feeling when a terrified little bird flies from your palm to freedom!

I can be by myself because I'm never lonely, I'm simply alone, living in my heavily populated solitude, a harum-scarum of infinity and eternity, and Infinity and Eternity seem to take a liking to the likes of me.

jak si? cz?owiek uchleje, to w Kersku te? jest Klimand?aro

You can't live without cracks in the brain. You can't rid yourself of freedom the way you'd rid yourself of lice.

This new age is melting you all down, because it's not the measles you've come down with, it's the epoch.