Iva

“A kávéház az újságíró temploma.”
― Dezső Kosztolányi, Kornél Esti

“He sat there among them, listened to the buzz of their conversation. He was captivated by them. In that racket every voice touched a key in his soul. He didn’t understand life. He had no conception of why he had been born into the world. As he saw it, anyone to whose lot fell this adventure, the purpose of which was unknown but the end of which was annihilation, that person was absolved from all responsibility and had the right to do as he pleased—for example, to lie full length in the street and begin to moan without any reason—without deserving the slightest censure. But precisely because he considered his life as a whole an incomprehensible thing, he understood its little details individually—every person without exception, every elevated and lowly point of view, every concept—and those he assimilated at once.”
― Deszö Kosztolányi, Kornel Esti

“When people go away they vanish, turn to nothing, stop being. They live only in memories, haunting the imagination.”
― Dezső Kosztolányi, Skylark

“He was no lover in a worldly sense; the only love he knew was that of divine understanding, of taking a whole life into its depths as if they were his own. From this, the greatest pain, the greatest happiness is born: the hope that we too will one day be understood, strangers will accept our words, our lives, as if they were their own.”
― Dezső Kosztolányi, Skylark