About Bohumil Hrabal: Bohumil Hrabal was a Czech writer, regarded by many Czechs as one of the best writers of the 20th century.
He was a gentle and sensitive soul, and therefore had a short temper, which is why he went straight after everything with an ax...
Writing is a defence against boredom, but it's also a cure for melancholy.
Because when I read, I don't really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through the veins to...
As I helped him up, I felt him shake all over, so I asked him to forgive me, without knowing what for, but that was my lot, asking forgiveness, I even asked forgiveness of myself for being what I was, what it was my nature to be.
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...
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.
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.
No book worth its salt is meant to put you to sleep, it's meant to make you jump out of your bed in your underwear and run and beat the author's brains out.
