Karel Čapek

“ There are two impressions which are completely fantastic: to discover something unexpected, and to discover something altogether familiar. One is always taken aback to meet an old acquaintance unawares. Well, in the same way I was astonished when I discovered the Houses of Parliament by the Thames, gentlemen in grey top-hats in the streets, two-metre bobbies at the cross roads, and so on. It was astonishing to find that England is really so English.
But to begin actually from the beginning I will draw a little picture of how England looks when you approach it from the English Channel. ”

“ There are surprisingly few people about; in Czechoslovakia one is accustomed to see somebody busying himself on every inch of the soil.
At last the train bores its way between houses of a curious sort; there are a hundred of them entirely alike; then a whole streetful alike; and again, and again. This produces the effect of a fashion craze. The train flies past a whole town which is beset by some terrible curse; inexorable Fate has decreed that each house shall have two pillars at the door. ”

“ When one of these bobbies, two metres high, raises his hand in Piccadilly, Saturn comes to a standstill and Uranus stops on his celestial path waiting until Bobby lowers his hand again. I have never seen anything so super human. ”