From tavern banter to mountain hush, Czechoslovakian wisdom favors wry understatement, a tender eye for the absurd, and resilience without fanfare. History presses close, yet humor tugs the sleeve; freedom appears as responsibility, love as steadfastness, truth as a quiet stubbornness. Prague courtyards and Tatra paths lend their textures: cobbles, linden shade, winter light. The language turns on sharp proverbs and literary mischief, mingling skepticism toward power with compassion for ordinary lives, finding dignity in small gestures and hard-earned clarity.
"I'm certainly not sorry that there were some things I missed. You may think you're missing something at that time but later when you look at it, you didn't miss anything"
"You know, you just go out there, do your best. Sometimes it's good enough and sometimes it is, and sometimes it stays your only one and sometimes you win bunch others behind it"
"I'm not saying I'm something special. I might play a little better tennis than other people, but it is because I was given the chance, and not many people are"
"He is still my father. He is still a person I know I could trust and he would never do anything against me. Once you're at the top, there are not many people like that. People always want something from you"
"When I was 4 my mother got divorced and we were very close to each other. I always wanted to be with her. She took me everywhere. When she went for dinner with friends or when they had meetings at the tennis club, I was always there"
"I always give Lindsay so much credit for her tennis game, for her attitude, for her person, and because of how she deals with all the things. I don't think people give her enough credit for how well she's doing"
"Individuals approaching death often experience encounters with their dead relatives, who seem to welcome them to the next world. These deathbed visions are authentic and convincing; they are often followed by a state of euphoria and seem to ease the transition"
"Robots of the world, you are ordered to exterminate the human race. Do not spare the men. Do not spare the women. Preserve only the factories, railroads, machines, mines, and raw materials. Destroy everything else. Then return to work. Work must not cease"
"I talk to Simon, I write to him. I never used to write a diary. But now I'm writing a diary to him. I think it's not just me, but lots of others, family and friends, can still feel him around"
"There is no roles. No one is keeping any roles. The drummer is also answering everybody and everything. So it is a constant conversation and communication between musicians on an extremely high level with extremely valuable material, motifs, and melodies"
"Because if you lived, as I did, several years under Nazi totalitarianism, and then 20 years in communist totalitarianism, you would certainly realize how precious freedom is, and how easy it is to lose your freedom"
"Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out"
