Life Is Elsewhere Quotes
"Love is either crazy or it's nothing at all."
"If we can't change the world, let's at least change our own lives and live them freely."
"I've crossed you out in order to create you all over again now."
"To be asleep, the moon in one eye and the sun in the other."
"The worst thing isn't that the world isn't free, but that people have unlearned their freedom."
"If every life is unique, let's draw the conclusion; let's reject everything that isn't new."
"It seemed to her that she was nothing but a belly, nothing but ugly wrinkled skin."
"The operation and the pain would come to an end and that meanwhile there was only one thing to do: hang on."
"Her eyes would redden and a tear emerge and fall on the dumplings."
"She wrote that she loved him and that she would never forget the miraculous time she had spent with him."
"She wanted to regain the protection of her modesty."
"That she had depicted with grand words the sadness that a few days before had made her suffer now brought her a soothing joy."
"The poem had ceased to be a simple succession of words and had become a thing."
"He wished to put his life on one of a pair of scales and death on the other."
"He felt himself grow, and his own real person seemed to be no more than an impersonation, a disguise, a mask of modesty."
"Jaromil swore that he would always be on the side of those who want radically to change the world."
"I believe that when it comes to love there’s no such thing as compromise."
"A date with a girl was first of all the art of conversation."
"A body that was the playground of his dreams!"
"They kissed for a long time, and when the kissing was finally over and they were unsure what to do next, she again raised her glasses toward him."
"The Communists had most of the power already, and they made this putsch so they could have all of it."
"A revolution is a brief period when recourse to violence is necessary in order to hasten the arrival of a society in which violence is forbidden."
"She was now lying on the cushions in her skirt and brassiere, and then astonishingly, although she had been kissing Jaromil avidly just moments before, now that he had taken her blouse off, she seemed to have fallen into a stupor."
"In the moments of weakness that now assail me, my fatigue, my withering that process so important and so pure, belong only to you."
"There is nothing more to do but wait for the saliva in our mouths to turn into dewdrops."
"I’m ashamed he had not joined earlier, that only the burdensome legacy of the house in which he had grown up separated him from those with whom he had long known he belonged."
"Jaromil, like all of us, attended bad schools and didn’t know how to answer; he tried to guess what the girl wanted to hear, but he was at a loss."
"Their wrinkled bodies touch each other with emotion, he says 'little girl,' she says 'my darling,' and they start to cry."
"What’s extraordinary is that you’re not only the queen of the poems I’m writing now but also of those that I wrote before I met you."
"He had exchanged the beauty of singularities that he alone understood for the beauty of generalities that everyone understood."
"Jaromil realized that they wouldn’t be making love that evening; he felt offended and sat silently on the couch."
"If I must die, let it be with you, my love, and only by fire turn into heat and light."
"Poetry is a domain in which all assertions become true."
"The poet has no need to prove anything; the only proof lies in the intensity of his emotion."
"With his poems the poet paints his self-portrait; but since no portrait is faithful, I can also say that with his poems he touches up his face."
"An obsessive desire for admiration is not only a weakness added on to a lyric poet’s talent but is also part of the very essence of poetic talent."
"My soul is an exotic flower with a rare and hypersensitive fragrance. I have great talent, perhaps also genius."
"Love means all or nothing. Love is total or it doesn't exist."
"True love is completely deaf to what the rest of the world might say, that's precisely how we recognize it."
"It seems to me that modesty is more precious than a dress."