“One thing, however is certain: I have been walking about the city on the Vltava for centuries; I mingle with the crowd, I trudge, I wander, I smell its beer, train smoke and river mud; you can see me where, as Kolár puts it, ‘invisible hands knead the dough of pedestrians on the pavement’s pastry boards’; where, to quote Holan, ‘the croutons of streets spread / with the garlic of the crowd reek a bit.’”
— Angelo Maria Ripellino, Magic Prague