Czech Author Quotes

Franz Kafka

Václav Havel

Karel Čapek

Milan Kundera

Franz Werfel

Jaroslav Seifert

Bohumil Hrabal

Time is short, my strength is limited, the office is a horror, the apartment is noisy, and if a pleasant, straightforward life is not possible, then one must try to wriggle through by subtle manoeuvres.

The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

Quite obviously a cat trusts human beings; but she doesn't trust another cat because she knows better than we do.

Lost in my dreams, I somehow cross at the traffic signals, bumping into street lamps or people, yet moving onward, exuding fumes of beer and grime, yet smiling, because my briefcase is full of books and that very night I expect them to tell me things about myself I don't know.

Anne Frank's legacy is still very much alive and it can address us fully, especially at a time when the map of the world is changing and when dark passions are awakening within people.

Fear is the touch of death, death reminding us of its existence.

Magnify the divine mystery and the holiness of mankind.

Here in the Lord's bosom rests
The tongues of beggars,
The lungs of generals,
The eyes of informers,
The skins of martyrs
In the absolute
Of the microscope's lenses.

A lad changed to a shrub in spring,
the shrub into a shepherd boy,
A fine hair to a lyre string,
snow into snow on hair piled high.

Jaroslav Seifert

I know that no reader ever asks a question. A writer must force his favors upon his readers.