Bohumil Hrabal Quotes

“I cieli non sono umani e la vita sopra di me e sotto di me e dentro di me neppure.”
― Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude

“and I look on my brain as a mass of hydraulically compacted thoughts, a bale of ideas, and my head as a smooth, shiny Aladdin’s lamp. How much more beautiful it must have been in the days when the only place a thought could make its mark was the human brain and anybody wanting to squelch ideas had to compact human heads, but even that wouldn’t have helped, because real thoughts come from outside and travel with us like the noodle soup we take to work; in other words, inquisitors burn books in vain. If a book has anything to say, it burns with a quiet laugh, because any book worth its salt points up and out of itself.”
― Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude

“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.”
― Bohumil Hrabal

“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.”
― Bohumil Hrabal

“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.”
― Bohumil Hrabal

“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.”
― Bohumil Hrabal

“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.”
― Bohumil Hrabal

“Είμαι μια κανάτα γεμάτη αθάνατο νερό μα και νεκρό νερό, φτάνει λίγο να γείρω για να ξεχυθούν από μέσα μου όμορφες σκέψεις, μορφωμένος παρά τη θέληση μου δεν ξέρω ποιες σκέψεις είναι δικές μου και ποιες τις διάβασα.”
― Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude

“Όταν διαβάζω ουσιαστικά δεν διαβάζω, παίρνω στο στόμα μια όμορφη φράση και την πιπιλάω σαν καραμέλα, σαν να σιγοπίνω ένα ποτηράκι λικέρ τόσην ώρα όσο να φτάσει αυτή η σκέψη να διαλυθεί μέσα μου σαν το οινόπνευμα, τόσην ώρα αποστάζει μέσα μου ίσαμε να φτάσει όχι μονάχα στο μυαλό και στην καρδιά μου, μα κουτσά κουτσά, μέσα απ' τις φλέβες μου, ως τα τριχοειδή αγγεία μου'.”
― Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude