“In my somnolent state I also thought about the Czech Republic. The border would appear in my mind and that gentle, beautiful country beyond it. Over there, everything is lit up by the Sun, gilded with light. The fields breathe evenly at the foot of the Table Mountains, surely created purely for the purpose of looking pretty. The roads are straight, the streams are clear, Mouflons and Fallow Deer graze in pens by the houses, Leverets frolic in the corn, and little bells are tied to the combines as a gentle way of scaring them off to a safe distance. The people aren’t in a hurry, and don’t compete with each other all the time. They don’t go chasing after pipe dreams. They’re happy with who they are and what they have.”

– Olga Tokarczuk,
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, p. 83-84,
winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature