Bohumil Hrabal

“Dovevate starvene seduti a casa, sul culo...”

— Bohumil Hrabal

“Trembling as usual, I dropped to one knee and, holding on to the drum with one hand, looked up, wondering what he,…

— Bohumil Hrabal

I expect them to tell me things about myself I don't know...

— Bohumil Hrabal

“Suddenly the door opened and in stomped a giant reeking of the river, and before anyone knew what was happening, he had…

— Bohumil Hrabal

“Because when I read, I don't really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit…

— Bohumil Hrabal

“I was in harmony with everything and I was saved, too, but lost in a way as well... but I think this…

— Bohumil Hrabal

And so everything I see in this world, it all moves backward and forward at the same time, like a black-smith's bellows,…

— Bohumil Hrabal

He was a gentle and sensitive soul, and therefore had a short temper, which is why he went straight after everything with…

— Bohumil Hrabal

“Writing is a defence against boredom, but it's also a cure for melancholy.”

— Bohumil Hrabal

“Most of all I enjoy central-heating control rooms, where men with higher education, chained to their jobs like dogs to their kennels,…

— Bohumil Hrabal

“I cieli non sono umani e la vita sopra di me e sotto di me e dentro di me neppure.”

— Bohumil Hrabal

“... whichever of my friends was and is sensitive, touchy even, had to choose... emigration... and I emigrated inwardly, here to the…

— Bohumil Hrabal

“[...] real poetry must hurt, as if you'd forgotten you wrapped a razor blade in your handkerchief and you blow your nose,…

— Bohumil Hrabal

Today's Gypsies, who have lived in Prague for only two generations, light a ritual fire wherever they work, a nomads' fire crackling…

— Bohumil Hrabal

I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop.

— Bohumil Hrabal

To spend our days betting on three-legged horses with beautiful names

— Bohumil Hrabal

“I went up the stairs of the little hotel, that time in Bystřice by Benešov, and at the turn of the stairs…

— Bohumil Hrabal

I always loved twilight: it was the only time of day I had the feeling that something important could happen. All things…

— Bohumil Hrabal

“I kept working and...reading The Theory of The Heavens a sentence at a time, savoring each sentence like a cough drop and…

— Bohumil Hrabal

“Every beloved object is the center of a garden of paradise.”

— Bohumil Hrabal

No book worth its salt is meant to put you to sleep, it's meant to make you jump out of your bed…

— Bohumil Hrabal

“The closest one person can get to another is through silence.”

— Bohumil Hrabal

Lost in my dreams, I somehow cross at the traffic signals, bumping into street lamps or people, yet moving onward, exuding fumes…

— Bohumil Hrabal

“Beautiful blueberry nights fill my liver with morning and the nozzle of my heart spews forth an amalgam of blood. The sun…

— Bohumil Hrabal

“A few more years of the same, though, and I got used to it: I would load entire libraries from country castles…

— Bohumil Hrabal