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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

And I liked looking at myself in the mirror, watching myself in the shop windows as I strode along, and even when I touched my face, I felt no wrinkles at my mouth or forehead.
BOHUMIL HRABAL

Along Forhead Mouth Stride Touched Window
It’s interesting how young poets think of death while old fogies think of girls.
BOHUMIL HRABAL

Girl Interesting Thinking
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.
BOHUMIL HRABAL

Book Laughing Real
Or I sip it like a liqeur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through the veins to the root of each blood vessel.
BOHUMIL HRABAL

Blood Brain Coursing Dissolves Each Infuse
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.
BOHUMIL HRABAL

Book Running Writing
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.
BOHUMIL HRABAL

Book Dream Moving Smiling
A symbol of the eternity that preceded human thought, a free fire, a gift from heaven, a living sign of the elements unnoticed by the world-weary pedestrian, a fire in the ditches of Prague warming the wanderer’s eye and soul.
BOHUMIL HRABAL

Crackling Ditches Generation Lived Plague
He was a gentle and sensitive soul, and therefore had a short temper, which is why he went straight after everything with an ax.
BOHUMIL HRABAL

Sensitive Soul Temper
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

Lonely Solitude
Because when I read, I don’t really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop.
BOHUMIL HRABAL

Beautiful Blood Heart
I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop.
BOHUMIL HRABAL

Beautiful Fruit Mouth
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.
BOHUMIL HRABAL

Forgiving Helping Knowing
All streets, all squares, and all the people walking through them; I even had the feeling that I was a handsome young man.
BOHUMIL HRABAL

Handsome Man People Walking
And so everything I see in this world, it all moves backward and forward at the same time, like a black-smith’s bellows, like everything in my press, turning into its opposite at the command of the red and green buttons, and that’s what makes the world go round.
BOHUMIL HRABAL

Black Button Command Moving Opposites
I even asked forgiveness of myself for being what I was, what it was my nature to be.
BOHUMIL HRABAL

Ask Forgiveness Nature
I expect them to tell me things about myself I don’t know.
BOHUMIL HRABAL

Briefcases Grime Knows

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.

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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.

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