Hrabal is someone I always felt close to. His characters are clearly crazy but also immensely human and humane. His insanity has its own rhythm, its own strange and beautiful logic, one that connects rather than divides, one that celebrates human failure as a form of an attempt at reaching towards the higher form of ourselves. That humanity, humility at the greatness of what it is to be human, is what draws me near him. His tales are like songs that never end as their soft lullaby stay with us forever.