The Bohemian Flats Quotes

“My hope is that someday people will embrace difference, not hate it.”
― Mary Relindes Ellis, The Bohemian Flats

“Quoting the American president Thomas Jefferson during one of their tutorials: “I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.”
― Mary Relindes Ellis, The Bohemian Flats

“Alzbêta is right. He learns that people bring their culture, cultural feuds, and religious differences with them. Once in the States, they are free to modify their ethnic identities and cultural morals as their fortunes rise, often adapting the disdainful manners of the dominant Anglo culture.
Birth here does not, as it does in Europe, dictate one’s station in life. A peasant can work his way up to being a prominent businessman or hold political office. Varying levels of social veneer are purchased with the corresponding level of money obtained and as wealth is obtained, so is repression cast as good manners.”
― Mary Relindes Ellis, The Bohemian Flats

“He has left Europe and yet come home to it. He works in the city and lives in a rural village. He’s never seen such poverty and at the same time felt such wealth. There are rumblings of a labor strike at the mill but even that does not frighten him. The possibility of workers striking is amazing, incomprehensible in his previous life. Here, even with the darker things he has observed, is still the possibility of change. Here is the chaos of creativity, and at the same time a strange harmony. Here is where conformity is only for the sake of getting things done by a large group of people, not a cultural dictate ruling one’s entire life. Here he can fashion his own way, think ahead without prescription.”
― Mary Relindes Ellis, The Bohemian Flats

“Be careful not to romanticize them,” she cautions. “My father didn’t spend much time in the United States but he did live for a while in South America and traveled to the Congo. He said that to romanticize a people and their culture was a form of condescension. That it creates illusions that eventually breed contempt. Because those romanticized cannot live up to the illusions they never asked for.”
― Mary Relindes Ellis, The Bohemian Flats

“I didn’t want Marek to go over there, “he says. “It isn’t our fight, I told him. But it’s hard to take insults when you are a young pup. Marek got tired of being called a dumb bohunk just like Eberhard hated being called a Hun. I don’t know what it is with the Anglos of this city. They came from somewhere else, but if you ask them they just say they are Americans. Still we fight for America, same as they do. Pay the same price,” He puts the shotgun on the steps next to him. “I wanted to stay out of it. But Ray told me that we couldn’t bury our heads in the ground. That if the Hapsburg dynasty wins, it will try to rule the world. And I’ll be damned if I live under that yoke again.”
― Mary Relindes Ellis, The Bohemian Flats