Josef Škvorecký > Quotes

“We may think we live for wisdom, but in fact we're living for the the pleasure wisdom brings us.”
― Josef Škvorecký, Engineer of Human Souls

“Artists hold out the mirror to the bruises on the face of the world.”
― Josef Škvorecký

“There is beauty everywhere on earth, but there is greater beauty in those places where one feels that sense of ease which comes from no longer having to put off one’s dreams until some improbable future – a future inexorably shrinking away; where the fear that has pervaded one’s life suddenly vanishes because there is... nothing to be afraid of.”
― Josef Škvorecký, Engineer of Human Souls

“A person's got to be scared all the time - of God, if there is one, and of looking like a fool if there isn't.”
― Josef Škvorecký, The Cowards

“I have not lost the meaning of life, merely the illusion that life has a meaning.”
― Josef Škvorecký, Engineer of Human Souls

“Faulkner once said that all novels are shipwrecks. Derelicts. and he was right. There is something that falls short of perfection in every book, without exception, something influenced by the age, even something ridiculous; just like everyone without exception, has weaknesses and is trapped in his age and environment, and may even be ridiculous. But if he is an honourable man and if it is an honourable book, no one has the right to ridicule it or heap contempt upon it. Genuine lovers of literature will instead feel sorry that the author was not up to some things, and will look for the remains of the golden treasure in that shipwreck on the bottom of the sea of criticism. Such treasure is there, far more often than the snobs know, or are prepared to admit.”
― Josef Škvorecký, Engineer of Human Souls

“Because inside, people are dirty dogs. Everybody. The only difference is some people try to hide it and others don't bother.”
― Josef Škvorecký, The Cowards

“I won't tell them that even literature becomes a whore, for in conditions of normalisation everything and everyone becomes a whore, and out of solidarity the whore is forgiven. I won't tell them how with historical training a prostitute becomes subtle and genteel, and when the circumstances of an age fall out of memory she appears like a virgin bride. and the work remains, the conditions it was written in pass away, dirty hands become dust - only the work remains. I won't tell them that. But will any work remain? I won't be able to tell them that.”
― Josef Škvorecký, Engineer of Human Souls

“Their is beauty everywhere on earth.”
― Josef Škvorecký

“Whatever happens, we’ll all meet in that great card-index in the sky.”
― Josef Škvorecký, Engineer of Human Souls

“I knew damn well that nobody's ever really happy, or happy on time, since happiness belongs to the past.”
― Josef Škvorecký, The Cowards

“I was always, luckily, only a reader.”
― Josef Škvorecký

“I notice that the artists, if that is what they are, at the tables around, have noticed my Scandinavian. Their artist girlfriends have noticed her New York fashions. And I never cease to notice her beauty, sad, as all beauty is, because it is not eternal.”
― Josef Škvorecký, Engineer of Human Souls

“He belongs, as I do, to those who seek after meaning and he had discovered that meaning was no more than a gilded statue, a seven-day wonder, and a rather tasteless statue at that. … Meaning is a compulsive neurosis. It is only when the neurosis goes away, or we are cured of it, that we can live.”
― Josef Škvorecký, Engineer of Human Souls

“Social conscience is a fashion, it changes every year.”
― Josef Škvorecký, Engineer of Human Souls

“Bez urážky lze importovat jenom myšlenky myšlenkami, ne myšlenky zbraněmi. Každý násilný conquistador pokládá obyvatele dobývaného území za méněcenné. Conquistou jim to dává najevo. Je-li tu však něco méněcenného, pak jsou to myšlenky, které se umějí prosadit jenom zbraněmi.”
― Josef Škvorecký, Engineer of Human Souls

“The alchemy of time transforms everything into comedy. Everything. Even crucifixion.”
― Josef Škvorecký

“Odmlčel se, polkl, snažil se přemoct bolest, vědomí života blbě ztraceného. Ne vlastní blbostí.”
― Josef Škvorecký, Ordinary Lives

“Once again your Chandler wrote to Erle Stanley Gardner,
'To say that what this man writes is not literature is just like saying that a book can't be any good if it makes you want to read it. When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic
performance it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things.”
― Josef Škvorecký, Engineer of Human Souls

“Write whatever you want. Danny, my dear friend, write and tell me what life really is.”
― Josef Škvorecký

“To me literature is forever blowing a horn, singing about youth when youth is irretrievably gone, singing about your homeland when in the schitzophrenia of the times you find yourself in a land that lies over the ocean, a land - no matter how hospitable or friendly - where your heart is not, because you landed on these shores too late.”
― Josef Škvorecký

“writers who cast about for something new will scarcely ever be great, for great things could not have escaped the attention of earlier observers.”
― Josef Škvorecký, Engineer of Human Souls