"“My father never did anything else after that,” Valerie said. “Mostly, he became a drunk. But a man only needs one thing to be proud of. It will carry him through the rest of his life."

“To fear a truth! Blasphemy!”

“Thus we never see the true State of our Condition, till it is illustrated to us by its Contraries; nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it.”

“His presence was soothing, but his existence incomprehensible.”

“The greatness of a nation is in its symbols, its gestures, in doing things that are unprecedented. It’s why the Americans are falling behind—they built a nation on the idea of doing new things, and now they’d rather sit and pray that the world won’t make them adapt too much.”

“I couldn’t exist here. In the world that had come into being due to my absence.”

“I wonder which group I belong to. Can I be with the youth, the hedonists turning Prague into a playground of the Old Continent? Or does my destination, the science department of Univerzita Karlova, put me in with that other dreaded group, the adults, those who get up in the morning and know exactly how their day will unravel, those who live on the exchange system of work, awaiting their grave with quiet politeness?”