|
If we lose our memory, we lose ourselves. Forgetting is one of the symptoms of death. Without memory we cease to be human beings.
IVAN KLIMA, speech at conference in Lahti, Finland, 1990
The future was a time that called into question everything that came before it.
IVAN KLIMA, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
Most people can't imagine a life that is any different from the one they are actually living. They can dream about it, they can even go into the streets and demonstrate for it, but they still can't imagine what it would be like.
IVAN KLIMA, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
There is little that comes so close to death as fulfilled love.
IVAN KLIMA, Love and Garbage
A home is something we carry inside us. Those who do not have a home inside them cannot build one, either from defiance or from stone.
IVAN KLIMA, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
Graveyards remind us of the vanity of all human endeavour.
IVAN KLIMA, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
You can rule with a firm hand, or you can rule through consensus. Those with neither the strength for firmness nor the courage for consensus take refuge in the belief that they can remain somewhere in between. But that is an illusion.
IVAN KLIMA, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
Faith was a longing that pretended to be a conviction.
IVAN KLIMA, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
The world is like an enormous set of scales. When evil begins to outweigh good, angels cram themselves in on the lighter side. You can't see them, but there they are, restoring the balance.
IVAN KLIMA, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
Every few seconds a new book sees the light of day. Most of them will just be a part of the hum that makes us hard of hearing. Even the book is becoming an instrument of forgetting. A truly literary work comes into being as its creator’s cry of protest against the forgetting that looms over him, over his predecessors and his contemporaries alike, and over his time, and the language he speaks. A literary work is something that defies death.
IVAN KLIMA, speech at conference in Lahti, Finland, 1990
Animals have one thing that puts them way ahead of people: they don't dissemble, and you don't have to pretend in front of them.
IVAN KLIMA, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
If you tell anything to a woman ... it's like putting it in the papers.
IVAN KLIMA, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
Fear is the touch of death, death reminding us of its existence.
IVAN KLIMA, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
To destroy is easier than to create, and that is why so many people are ready to demonstrate against what they reject. But what would they say if one asked them what they wanted instead?
IVAN KLIMA, Love and Garbage
How long can you suppress your own desires? Until you understand that in doing so will destroy yourself.
IVAN KLIMA, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
I realised the amazing power of literature and of the human imagination generally: to make the dead live and to stop the living from dying.
IVAN KLIMA, Love and Garbage
A picture was a motionless record of motion. An arrested representation of life. A picture was the kiss of death pretending to possess immutability.
IVAN KLIMA, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
Justice was revenge wrapping itself in a cloak of high principle.
IVAN KLIMA, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
Wretchedness was the lot of those who hadn't the strength to be honourable nor the courage to be dishonourable. Wretchedness was the lot of those who, under all circumstances, remain in the middle.
IVAN KLIMA, Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
|
