Zuzana Holá

"People helped me enough. That joke about someone grabbing you on one side of the intersection and dragging you over your resistance to the other side, even though you don't want to go there, that was classic. Someone saw that I was standing there indecisively, not seeing the traffic light, so every now and then there was someone who grabbed my arm and just dragged me - the resistance - to the other side and I didn't want to go there at all. And I learned a lot. And then when I saw it, I couldn't get used to it. I was getting on the trolley and I knew I had to lift my leg up a lot. And I could see where I was stepping, but I still lifted my foot so I wouldn't fall on the steps. So that was hard to get used to. I always attracted attention by acting abnormal. I could see in the carriage that I had something to hold on to, because I could see that I had a stiletto above me, I would raise my hand and good. I was just groping and not looking. So that took me longer to get used to. I'm still getting used to it, actually. Sometimes what happens is that I'm heading for the door and I raise my hand in defense so I don't bump into it, even though I can see the door is open. So that took me longer to get used to."

"We had a phone call that evening. Luboš was visiting someone and I was home alone. I picked up the phone and it said, 'This is Castro, call your husband,' and I said in Spanish, 'Keep that joke to yourself,' and I hung up the phone. And a minute later he called again and it was the same thing. It turned out that it was really Castro and that he was asking Luboš to meet him. They're going to watch basketball together. Luboš knew that basketball was played with a ball, but that's all he knew. He didn't even have a sense for it. But with Fidel, he had to. When they were done playing basketball, Fidel Castro took Luboš scuba diving with him. Luboš couldn't swim, let alone dive. So that's how I can answer the question of what he had with Fidel."

"I had a scooter and I was fabulously good on it. I was so sorry that it was so plain compared to the others that had a brake, a bell and a light. I only had a wooden one and a light one. Dad explained that those who had the frothy scooters were stupid because it made the scooter heavy, but I had a great one. I won. I had to win because I had a great scooter. 'Foot forward!' he always shouted at me from the balcony. A Russian boy was looking at us sadly. They'd made him a uniform and he had a revolver or a pistol. What the difference between them was, I don't know to this day, but it had a long barrel. And his comrades in arms made him a little submachine gun. That's what he normally carried, all these soldiers carried a gun. They'd always take it off and go, 'Give me watch!' And this boy stood and watched gloomily as we rode the scooter, and he didn't know what it was. You could tell he wanted to ride it. And the scooter ride looked easy, so he thought he could do it on the first try. He went up to a Czech guy, took the scooter from him, took off and fell off. We all laughed and he took out his machine gun and shot the kid. And that was it."