Anatoli Rybakov

“Sometimes the bigger the apartment, the harder it is to find room to put up an extra person for the night.”

“Friends and acquaintances in this day and age don't write at all, or if they do it's only to let you know they're still alive,which explains the craze for greeting cards of all kinds!”

“My descendants will manage without my portrait' she smiled. Anyway they'll have plenty of photographs of me. To this our famous conductor replied that a photograph only gives the outward appearance of the person,whereas a painting reveals the inner world.”

“Byelorussian songs, if you've ever heard them are slightly monotonous, even mournful yet they do have a certain melancholy charm and compassion about them.”

“One thing is sure:the idea that each nation is racially pure is a myth, especially a nation with a history of four thousand years.”

“There was something religious in grandmother's face, not in any sanctimoniously devout or ecstatic sense,but a look full of religious feeling, serenity and resignation.”

“I think a man can either believe in God or not believe, he can get faith and he can lose it but there is only one God for the true believer, and that is the one he carries in his heart.”

“There was snow on the veranda, and on his orders the snow had not been removed. If there were no tracks in the snow, it meant that no one had approached. And as usual, the sight of the untouched snow soothed him”

“...For all the profound human modesty of Comrade Stalin,he will have to tolerate our outpourings of love and loyalty to him[applause],because not only we,who live and work under his direction,but all the working people in our land,tie their hopes for a radiant future for mankind to his name.[Applause] 'Listen,why should I read this? Let's go' Gleb repeated. All right.All right. But what do you think?-He's flunky!-But he wrote The Quiet Don,a great novel.In the twenties there was doubt about his authorship.They even had a special commission to investigate.I heard something about that.Akimov told me.The read author was some White officer.But no one would acknowledge that...If The Quiet Don is a work of genius,the author cannot be flunky.As your beloved Pushkin said,dearie,genius and evil are incompatible.Not every genius can overcome fear.And Sholokhov is no genius.”

“We wanted to serve the socialist fatherland,but it turned out we weren't needed.”

“And Eisenstein was doing it,too!As a young boy Sasha had seen his Battleship Potemkin in the Khudoshestvennyi Theater on the Arbat Sqaure.The cashiers,ticket-takers,cloak room attendants, all were dressed in sailors' uniforms;it looked just grand,it set the mood.The world had acknowledged BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN as the best film and Eisenstein as the greatest director.Now the 'greatest' was loyally serving the tyrant and executioner.Here was an example for his argument with Gleb about genius and villainy. Gleb also read the paper and gave Sasha a meaningful glance. 'Well then one more sycophant.”

“The golden stock of the Russian Revolution.' Where is this golden stock today? These people have come to replace them. From the top to the bottom.They are offering up Russia,they driving people to their deaths.Sasha remembered:Panait Istrati had called those who had opposed and fought against Stalin in the 1920s and who were annihilated by him in the 1930s 'the golden stock of the Russian Revolution”

“Someone said that revolutions are begun by idealists and ended by the scoundrels who destroy the idealists.”

“Death solves all problems — no man, no problem.”

“Falsehood had become the morality of the society.People lied at every turn.”

“...Alexei Tolstoy,Leonov, and Zoshenko had demanded that Tukhachevsky be shot. Pasternak ought to be added to them.Yes,even Pasternak couldn't stand the pressure.Vadim trembled with joy when he saw his name among the rest.."Tell me dear what millennium is it outside? This one!Everyone signed--Vsevolod Vishnevsky,Vasily Grossman,Tynyanov,Paustovsky,Konstantin Simonov,Antokolsky,Fedin,Sholokhov,Fadeyev,Tikhonov,all of them...Is that considered the normal order of things?”

“...They came to see me too,Varya said.It was a joke.They asked if I believed in God...Yes Mikhail Yırevich repeated,that question shouldn't be in there.The first census after the revolution was in 1920 and when Lenin saw the question on faith,he had them take it out.He understood the inequity of the question.”

“Art that puts itself in dependence on orthodoxy,even under the most progressive doctrine,is doomed to failure.”

“Everyone was driven to write.It was Gorky's fault--he had announced that "literature should be written by working people",and showed with his own example that an ordinary tramp could become a writer.”

“Those are gladioli,Josef Vissarionovich.The lower buds open before the tops.But it's better when they blossom at the same time.So the lower ones are wrapped in black paper,to keep them from blooming until the top ones do.”

“She didn't have the strength to fight hunger and injustice,she didn't know how to fight hunger and injustice,she didn't know how to fight, but she refused to enjoy a feast during this plague.”

“They are all blinded and stunned by him,he's a God for them -- greater than a God,because people who believe in God have a concept of good and evil,charity,redemption,compassion but they don't.They have only Stalin. He's their god and their conscience.”

“Throughout history people blamed their sufferings on everyone and anyone except God.You don't criticize God,you thank Him.”

“A great poet can have the role of spiritual head of a nation.A great ruler is the spiritual head of a nation, and next to him there can be no other spiritual head.”

“The smart tyrant flatters the people with words,while with deeds he destroys them.”