#81

“(...) Socrates and Christ they never wrote a line yet their teachings are still valid, while others are less read the more books they publish, history's revenge you might call it (...)” (id, 83).

#80

“(...) what a fate for a handsome young man trained in the art or carpentry, fo sawing boards and beams, and boom! off he goes to teach the world that loving your neighbour doesn't mean somersaults on the sofa (...)” (id, 64).

#79

“(...) real poetry must hurt as if you'd forgotten you wrapped a razor blade in your handkerchief and you blow your nose, no book worth its worth its salt is meant to put you to sleep, it's meant to make you jump out of bed in your underwear and run and beat the author's brains out (...)” (id, 30).

#78

“(...) what I'm giving you now, young ladies, are like windows on the world, points goals, scores, the principle the late Strauss applied to his heavenly melodies, sending them out into the world to refine emotions, like the European Renaissance, for which Themistocles and Miltiades and Socrates and Goethe and Mozart did so much and which has made it impossible for us to say to a beauty we're tired of, get lost, or even Adieu, because our refined emotions require us to compose a farewell melody or poem to be dispatched with a bouquet of roses (...)” (id, 27-28).

#77

“(...) any young lady will tell you you might as well be buried alive if the man in your life has a faulty fandangle (...)” (id, 6).

#16

“Somewhere over in Germany, in a town beside a lake, every evening a blazing swan would fly upon into the air, and after it had finished burning, it would fall down into the surface of the lake, the locals were horrified, so they organised some patrols and caught a young man, who had just lured another swan with a bread roll, he poured a bottle of petrol over it, and lit it, delighting himself with the sight of this blazing swan soaring up into the night... and when thay caught him, he was a young man, who said in his defence, that he was inspired by Salvador Dali, a painting of a burning giraffe had disturbed him so much at night that it made the room hurt, where he dreamt about this blazing giraffe and Salvador Dali's paranoiac-critical method, he'd wanted to pour petrol over a giraffe at the zoo to see its mane catch fire, but he couldn't reach up that high, so he'd lured over a trusting swan, and when it soared up blazing into the sky, he saw it rise to the zenith before it fell, he saw Salvador Dali's burning giraffe... and the world stopped hurting, and he didn't know how that image would strike me, like the surface of the pond which the once lovely swan hit in its cooling descent...” (Hrabal, 1998: 12-13)

HRABAL, Bohumil (1998). Total Fears Letters To Dubenka. Translation by James Naughton. Prague: Twisted Spoon Press.