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 HRABALAnd 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.
More Bohumil Hrabal Quotes
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All streets, all squares, and all the people walking through them; I even had the feeling that I was a handsome young man.
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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.
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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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He was a gentle and sensitive soul, and therefore had a short temper, which is why he went straight after everything with an ax.
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I expect them to tell me things about myself I don’t know.
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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.
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I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop.
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Today’s Gypsies, who have lived in Prague for only two generations, light a ritual fire wherever they work, a nomads’ fire crackling only for the joy of it, a blaze of roughhewn wood like a child’s laugh.
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To spend our days betting on three-legged horses with beautiful names
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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.
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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.
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I even asked forgiveness of myself for being what I was, what it was my nature to be.
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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.
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It’s interesting how young poets think of death while old fogies think of girls.
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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