Ivo Andric

“Human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, when all the time we are longing to move the stars to pity.”

“There are times when a man's silence is a mountain, and his speech is a river.”

“For as long as there is a sun and a moon, there will be countless uncomfortable things in this world that we can neither avoid nor change.”

“Between the fear that something will happen and the hope that it will not, there is much more space than one thinks.”

“The years passed, and the generation of those who had built the bridge, and of those who had first crossed it, slowly vanished from the earth.”

“Of everything that man erects and builds in his urge for life, nothing is in my eyes better and more valuable than bridges.”

“A man's life is a state of gradual absorption of the poisons which lie in wait for him in his food and drink and even in the air he breathes.”

“Life is an inexplicable miracle, for it is incessantly wasted and spent, yet it still endures and stands firm, like the bridge on the Drina.”