Mikhail Shishkin
Mikhail Pavlovich Shishkin (Russian: Михаил Павлович Шишкин, born 18 January 1961) is a Russian writer.
Mikhail Shishkin was born in 1961 in Moscow.
Shishkin studied English and German at Moscow State Pedagogical Institute. After graduation he worked as a street sweeper, road worker, journalist, school teacher, and translator. He debuted as a writer in 1993, when his short story "Calligraphy Lesson" was published in Znamya magazine. Since 1995 he has lived in Zurich, Switzerland. He averages one book every five years.
Shishkin openly opposes the current Russian government, calling it a "corrupt, criminal regime, where the state is a pyramid of thieves" when he pulled out of representing Russia at the 2013 Book Expo in the United States.
Shishkin's books have been translated into more than ten languages. His prose is universally praised for style, e.g., "Shishkin's language is wonderfully lucid and concise. Without sounding archaic, it reaches over the heads of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (whose relationship with the Russian language was often uneasy) to the tradition of Pushkin." He deals with universal themes like death, resurrection, and love. Shishkin has been compared to numerous great writers, including Anton Chekhov, Vladimir Nabokov and James Joyce, while he admits to being influenced by Chekhov along with Leo Tolstoy and Ivan Bunin, saying "Bunin taught me not to compromise, and to go on believing in myself. Chekhov passed on his sense of humanity – that there can’t be any wholly negative characters in your text. And from Tolstoy I learned not to be afraid of being naïve."
“Numai că arca mea nu este din lemn,ci din cuvinte.”
“Și moartea ta e un dar. Mori de dragul lor.”
“Pentru mine era evident, cea mai veche arheosubstanță era cerneala.”
“Înțelegi , Sașa , am trăit într-un fel de înstrăinare față de viață. Între mine și lume, ca un gard, s-au ridicat literele.”
“Whoever can be happy right now, should.”
“Resurrection of the flesh. Out of nothingness, out of the void, out of white plaster, out of a dense fog, out of a snowy field, out of a sheet of paper there suddenly will appear people, living bodies, they rise up to remain forever, because they can’t vanish, disappearing is simply not an option; death has already come and gone. First the contour, outlines, edges. Period, period, comma makes a crooked little face. Cross-out. The man stretches from this crack in the wall to that spot of sun. Stretches from nail to nail.”
“Since everyone can't be happy anyway, whoever can be happy right now, should. You have to be happy today, right now, no matter what. Someone said there can't be a heaven if there's a hell. Supposedly it's impossible to be in heaven if you know suffering exists somewhere. Nonsense. True enjoyment of life can only be felt if you've known suffering.”
“If God gave each person his own life, then He will give each person his own special resurrection. If God performed one miracle and gave me this rushed, elusive life, then he will think up a way to give me another that lasts. And there will be this Easter night there, too. And today's evening after the rain.”
“You have to arrive at unbelief yourself, and Russians get their unbelief for free, therefore they don't value it, they value faith.”
“If beauty and love do not suit the times, then you have to be beautiful and to love to spite the times!”
“Everything has its price: sorrow for happiness; birth for love; death for birth.”
“The war is going on, and I'm singing. But I can't bandage up the wounded like Tala. I can, of course. But so can hundreds of other young women. Let the daring and decisive ones do it, not those like me. No, I'm daring and decisive, too. And I want to sing. It's not my fault that my youth came in time of war! I won't get another youth! And I'm convinced that singing when all around is hatred and death is no less important. Maybe even more important.This is what I believe: If somewhere on earth the wounded are finished off with rifle butts, that means somewhere else people have to be singing and rejoicing in life! The more death there is around, the more important to counter it with life, love, and beauty!”
“People rarely die from love, but they are frequently born from it.”
“All the rest, besides my loving and being loved, has no importance whatsoever.”
“Love is like the moon: if it's not waxing, it's waning, but it's the same as the last time, always the same.”
“Dar ştii ce se va întâmpla dacă numărătorul ăsta stelar de afară va fi împărţit la numitor? O jumătate a universului la cealaltă? Voi rezulta eu. Şi tu alături de mine.”