Boris Pasternak

“It's only in bad novels that people are divided into two camps and have nothing to do with each other. In real life everything gets mixed up! Don't you think you'd have to be a hopeless nonentity to play only one role all your life, to have only one place in society, always to stand for the same thing?--Ah, there you are!"- Larissa Fyodorovna in Doctor Zhivago.”

“The greatness of a writer has nothing to do with subject matter itself, only with how much the subject matter touches the author.”

“Minila bodo leta, veliko pomembnih let. Mene tedaj že ne bo več. Časi očetov in dedov se ne bodo vrnili, kar pravzaprav niti ni pomembno in si niti tega ne želim. Zagotovo pa bodo ponovno vzniknile tako dolgo zatajevane plemenitost, ustvarjalnost in veličina. To bo obdobje velikih vrednot. Vaše življenje bo postalo bogato in plodno kot še nikoli doslej... Tedaj se spomnite name.”

“Ne pišem svoje biografije.Z njo se ukvarjam, ko mi jepotrebna za tujo.”

“There shall be no more death, Because we have already seen all that, Its old and we are tired of it, And now we need something new, And this new thing is Eternal Life”

“Life is not as easy as croosing a field”

“She was incomparable in her inspired loveliness. Her arms amazed one, as one can be astonished by a lofty way of thinking. Her shadow on the wallpaper of the hotel room seemed the silhouette of her uncorruption.”

“He realised, more vividly than ever before, that art had two constant, two unending preoccupations: it is always meditating upon death and it is always thereby creating life.”

“As he scribbled his odds and ends, he made a note reaffirming his belief that art always serves beauty, and beauty is delight in form, and form is the key to organic life, since no living thing can exist without it, so that every work of art, including tragedy, expresses the joy of existence.”

“The arbitrariness of the revolutionaries is terrible not because they're villains, but because it's a mechanism out of control, like a machine that's gone off the rails.”

“If it's so painful to love and absorb electricity, how much more painful it is to be a woman, to be the electricity, to inspire love.”

“If you go near her or touch her with your finger, a spark will light up the room and either kill you on the spot or electrify you for your whole life with a magnetically attractive, plaintive craving and sorrow.”

“I love you wildly, insanely, infinitely.”

“With you I'm jealous of what is obscure, unconscious, of something in which explanations are unthinkable, of something that cannot be puzzled out. I'm jealous of your toilet things, of the drops of sweat on your skin, of the infectious diseases borne on the air, which may affect you and poison your blood.”

“I'm broken, I have a crack in me for all my life. I was made a woman prematurely, criminally early, and initiated into life from its worst side, in the false, boulevard interpretation of a self-confident aging parasite from former times, who profited from everything and allowed himself everything.”

“Still more than by the communion of souls, they were united by the abyss that separated them from the rest of the world.”

“In some men compassion for a woman goes beyond all conceivable limits. Their responsiveness places her in unrealizable positions, not to be found in the world, existing only in imagination, and on account of her they are jealous of the surrounding air, of the laws of nature, of the millennia that went by before her.”

“What an incorrigible nonentity one must be to play only one role in life, to occupy only one place in society, to always mean one and the same thing!”

“All mothers are mothers of great people, and it is not their fault that life later disappoints them.”

“And then, amidst the joy that grips everyone, I meet your mysteriously mirthless gaze, wandering no one knows where, in some far-off kingdom, in some far-off land. What wouldn't I give for it not to be there, for it to be written on your face that you are pleased with your fate and need nothing from anyone”

“Only the solitary seek the truth, and they break with all those who don't love it sufficiently”

“Will you feel pain? Do the tissues feel their disintegration? In other words, what will happen to your consciousness? But what is consciousness? Let's see. A conscious attempt to fall asleep is sure to produce insomnia, to try to be conscious of one's own digestion is a sure way to upset the stomach. Consciousness is a poison when we apply it to ourselves. Consciousness is a light directed outward, it lights up the way ahead of us so that we don't stumble. It's like the headlights on a locomotive - turn them inward and you'd have a crash.”

“I don't know a movement more self-centered and further removed from the facts than Marxism. Everyone is worried only about proving himself in practical matters, and as for the men in power, they are so anxious to establish the myth of their infallibility that they do their utmost to ignore the truth. Politics don't appeal to me. I don't like people who don't care about the truth.”

“This was a time to prepare for the cold weather, to store up fire and wood. But in those days of the triumph of materialism, matter had become a disembodied idea, and the problems of alimentation and fuel supply took the place of food and firewood.”

“Credo che non ti amerei tanto se in te non ci fosse nulla da lamentare, nulla da rimpiangere. Io non amo la gente perfetta, quelli che non sono mai caduti, non hanno inciampato. La loro è una virtù spenta, di poco valore. A loro non si è svelata la bellezza della vita.”

“How intense can be the longing to escape from the emptiness and dullness of human verbosity, to take refuge in nature, apparently so inarticulate, or in the wordlessness of long, grinding labour, of sound sleep, of true music, or of a human understanding rendered speechless by emotion!”

“Ordinarily, people are anxious to test their theories in practice, to learn from experience, but those who wield power are so anxious to establish the myth of their own infallibility that they turn back on truth as squarely as they can. Politics mean nothing to me. I don't like people who are indifferent to the truth.”

“ХамлетСпря шумът. На Сцената съм вече.До вратата плътно прилепен,аз долавям в отгласа далеченвсичко, дето ще се случи с мен.Мракът на нощта е в мен насочен,с хиляди бинокли ме следи.Само тая чаша, Ава Отче,днес да ме отмине отреди.Вярвам, твоят замисъл голям е,ще играя ролята докрай,но това сега е друга драмаи отсрочка тоя път ми дай.Но подред, обмислено се действа;и на пътя ти стои черта.Аз съм сам. Във всичко — фарисейство.Не от ден до пладне — до смъртта!----------------------------------ГамлетГул затих. Я вышел на подмостки.Прислонясь к дверному косяку,Я ловлю в далёком отголоскеЧто случится на моём веку́.На меня наставлен сумрак но́чиТысячью биноклей на оси́.Если только можно, Авва, Отче,Чашу эту мимо пронеси.Я люблю твой замысел упрямыйИ играть согласен эту роль.Но сейчас идёт другая драма,И на этот раз меня уволь.Но продуман распорядок действий,И неотвратим конец пути.Я один, всё тонет в фарисействе.Жизнь прожить — не поле перейти.”

“Progress in science is governed by the laws of repulsion, every step forward is made by refutation of prevalent errors and false theories. Forward steps in art are governed by the law of attraction, are the result of imitation of and admiration for beloved predecessors.”

“No one makes history, no one sees it happen, no one sees the grass grow.”

“Io non amo la gente perfetta, quelli che non sono mai caduti, non hanno inciampato. La loro è una virtù spenta, di poco valore. A loro non si è svelata la bellezza della vita.”

“Ecco che cos'era la vita, che cos'era l'esperienza, che cosa inseguivano coloro che andavano in cerca di avventure, ecco a che cosa mirava l'arte: ritornare a casa propria, ai propri affetti, riprendere la vita”

“She was here on earth to make sense of its wild enchantments.”

“Farewell, my great one, my own, farewell, my pride, farewell, my swift, deep, dear river, how I loved your daylong splashing, how I loved to plunge into your cold waves.”

“And then the two basic ideals of modern man- without them he is unthinkable- the idea of free personality and the idea of life as sacrafice”

“You need to surrender to some such ultimate purpose more fully, more unreservedly than you had ever done in the old familiar, peaceful days, in the old life that was now abolished and gone for good.”

“Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.”

“They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees, and the clouds, and the sky over their heads, and the earth under their feet. Perhaps their surrounding world, the strangers they met in the street, the landscapes drawn up for them to see on their walks, the rooms in which they lived and loved, were even more pleased with their love than they were themselves.”

“I have the impression that if he didn't complicate his life so needlessly, he would die of boredom.”

“Three years of changes, moves, uncertainties, upheavals; the war, the revolution; scenes of destruction, scenes of death, shelling, blown-up bridges, fires, ruins—all this turned suddenly into a huge, empty, waste space. The first real event since the long interruption was this vertiginous home-coming by train, in the knowledge that his home was still safe, still existing somewhere, with every smallest stone in it dear to him. This was the point of life, this was experience, this was the quest of adventure seekers and what artists had in mind—this coming home to your family, to yourself, this renewal of life. ”

“I don't think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret. I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.”

“I don't like purely philosophical works. I think a little philosophy should be added to life and art by way of seasoning, but to make it one's specialty seems to me as strange as eating nothing but horseradish."- Lara, from Doctor Zhivago”

“You and I, it's as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.”

“A literary creation can appeal to us in all sorts of ways-by its theme, subject, situations, characters. But above all it appeals to us by the presence in it of art. It is the presence of art in Crime and Punishment that moves us deeply rather than the story of Raskolnikov's crime.”

“The Mother of God is asked to 'pray zealously to her Son and her God,' and the words of the psalm are put into her mouth:'My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior. for He hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.' It is because of her child that she says this, He will magnify her ('For He that is mighty hath done to me great things'): He is her glory. Any woman could say it. For everyone of them, God is in her child. Mothers of great men must have been familiar with this feeling, but then, all women are mothers of great men-it isn't their fault if life disappoints them later.”

“As before the collapse, the setting sun brushed the tiles, brought out the warm brown glow on the wallpaper, and hung the shadow of the birch on the wall as if it were a woman's scarf.”

“After two or three stanzas and several images by which he was himself astonished, his work took possession of him and he experienced the approach of what is called inspiration. At such moments the correlation of the forces controlling the artist is, as it were, stood on its head. The ascendancy is no longer with the artist or the state of mind which he is trying to express, but with language, his instrument of expression. Language, the home and dwelling of beauty and meaning, itself begins to think and speak for man and turns wholly into music, not in the sense of outward, audible sounds but by virtue of the power and momentum of its inward flow. Then, like the current of a mighty river polishing stones and turning wheels by its very movement, the flow of speech creates in passing, by the force of its own laws, rhyme and rhythm and countless other forms and formations, still more important and until now undiscovered, unconsidered and unnamed.At such moments Yury felt that the main part of his work was not being done by him but by something which was above him and controlling him: the thought and poetry of the world as it was at that moment and as it would be in the future. He was controlled by the next step it was to take in the order of its historical development; and he felt himself to be only the pretext and the pivot setting it in motion....In deciphering these scribbles he went through the usual disappointments. Last night these rough passages had astonished him and moved him to tears by certain unexpectedly successful lines. Now, on re-reading these very lines, he was saddened to find that they were strained and glaringly far-fetched.”

“And now listen carefully. You in others-this is your soul. This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life-your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. And what does it matter to you if later on that is called your memory? This will be you-the you that enters the future and becomes a part of it.”

“FebruaryBoris PasternakIt's February. Get ink. Weep.Write the heart out about it, singAnother song of FebruaryWhile raucous slush burns black with spring.Six grivnas* for a buggy ridePast booming bells, on screaming gears,Out to a place where drizzles fallLouder than any ink or tearsWhere like a flock of charcoal pears,A thousand blackbirds, ripped awryFrom trees to puddles, knock dry griefInto the deep end of the eye.A thaw patch blackens underfoot.The wind is gutted with a scream.True verses are the most haphazard,Rhyming the heart out on a theme.*Grivna: a unit of currency.”

“Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the joy of possessing form, and form is the key to organic life since no living thing can exist without it.”