Quotes

[on Josef Nesvadba]: "I've known him since I was young. He was an extremely intelligent, charismatic man, even if his appearance didn't match it at all. He wore shabby clothes, "and even as a student he had a large bald head - nowadays bald heads are fashionable, but at that time it looked rather curious and not particularly attractive in a young man who had a completely round head and face. Moreover, he didn't have nice teeth, and although he went to Eva Bosáková's courses, he never got rid of his round figure. Yet he had something extremely attractive about him, especially to women, and he took full advantage of it. After all, even in his profession as a psychiatrist, he dealt with sexual aberrations, and even wrote erotic books under the pseudonym Joseph Nevada; but these were published only in Germany."

[on Karel Höger]: "I remember him with a love that has not faded even when we broke up. Actually, we didn't break up, we remained friends, we just went our separate ways. Much has been written about him, good and bad, because there is no man in the world who can please everyone, and he was too great a personality not to become a thorn in the side of various morons who didn't like his views, his attitudes. And he, for whom the National Theatre was the pinnacle, for which he lived, was dismissed by Premysl Kocí, the director at the time, from membership of the artistic council, to which he devoted all his time, was forbidden to make films, to act on television, and was given only small roles in the theatre, unworthy of such a great artist."

[on Olga Scheinpflugová]: "Olga belonged to the society that largely influenced the artistic and political tendencies of our state, she was invited to President Tomás Garrigue Masaryk's house long before she became wife of Karel Capek. In her personal, quite private relationships, some famous or distinguished men played a role, such as Jan Masaryk, Dr. Steinbach, Ferdinand Peroutka, and others of the Fridays, as those who came to Capek's villa every Friday to discuss culture, politics, and the development of our young republic were called. This was at a time when Olga was dating Capek, but the wedding was not even at the distant door. I think that their relationship was probably bound by a kind of tacit agreement, where Capek, limited in his physical activities by severe spondylarthrosis, gave her a freedom that she could not refuse. It was strange, on the surface she appeared to be an intellectual, more masculine than feminine, a passionate debater, defending her positions, and yet somewhere deep inside her slumbered a purely feminine passion, to which she succumbed, but perhaps also unwomanly, without emotional excitement, purely instinctively seeking satisfaction. It was simply a meeting of elements, precisely divided in others."