28 Quotes by Ivan Klima

Fear is the touch of death, death reminding us of its existence.

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.

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?

Justice was revenge wrapping itself in a cloak of high principle.

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.

If we lose our memory, we lose ourselves. Forgetting is one of the symptoms of death. Without memory we cease to be human beings.

Graveyards remind us of the vanity of all human endeavour.

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.

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.