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Quote by Bohumil Hrabal

Work

Mr. Kafka and Other Tales from the Time of the Cult

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Author

Bohumil Hrabal
Bohumil Hrabal

Bohumil Hrabal was a prominent Czech writer known for his humor and satire. His works often focus on the everyday lives of ordinary people, exploring themes of humanity and social change. Hrabal's distinctive writing style has won him a wide readership. more

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“Beautiful blueberry nights fill my liver with morning and the nozzle of my heart spews forth an amalgam of blood. The sun rides the elevator up from the darkness, and the silken, waving wheat sways like a woman's raw cotton skirt. The wheels of the pit-head elevator turn backward, and columns of cherry-tree trunks girdled with white lime reveal the hidden location of military burial grounds. Watchmen guard the female convicts in their wire enclosure, and swallows deliver the message of violins in their beaks.”

“She ran her fingers over the smooth stone and then tilted her head to look up at the sky, breathing slowly, as if she could smell and taste the stars in her lungs and on her tongue. They would be cool, she imagined, and crisp before breaking sweet under her teeth, like a honeycomb cracking open to ooze out its golden-yellow syrup. Dav had liked to think of touching the stars, of one day rising to live among them, but never had they considered together how they would taste. She shut her eyes. She wished she could ask him and wondered, like she did every night, what he would think of her now.”

“I like the snow when it falls behind me, not ahead of me.” “Do you ever appreciate anything for its beauty? Or only its usefulness?” She thought of the towering Belem, the quiet of the Nyinan Forest, the sparkling stars hanging their lights in the sky. She thought of the fires, the empty cities, the slaughtered horses. “When has beauty ever fixed anything?” “It doesn’t,” Ely replied, “but it makes the broken things worthwhile.”

“All that time she bad allowed herself to be wrapped up in fear - fear of being alone, fear of never finding Anna, fear of destroying the kingdom with her powers, That fear had held her prisoner since she had learned she had magic inside her. It was just as Grand Pabbie had said: she needed to learn to control her magic. If only she embraced the beauty in her life and the magic she'd been gifted - gifted not cursed with-then she could move mountains. Or at least thaw out he countryside.”