Josef Skvorecky

“A true poet is a man who is jealous of the word.”

“Anyone who has ever been an ugly adolescent – and that is most of us – can never feel completely secure.”

“It's a strange world... and the strangest thing about it is that it's the only one we've got.”

“Humor is the last resort of the desperate.”

“A detective story is a game between the author and the reader.”

“Jazz is the music of the body. The saxophonist's screaming is the sound of the orgasm.”

“Fascism is not a game. It's a disease.”

“The essence of the novel is its complexity, its ambiguity, its capacity to hold contradictory truths.”

“To be a dissident is to be in a permanent state of opposition.”