Nikolai Grozni
Nikolai Grozni was born in Sofia, Bulgaria. His given name is Nikolai Grozdinski - Николай Гроздински.
He began training as a classical pianist at the age of four and won his first major award in Salerno, Italy, at the age of nine. He studied jazz at Berklee College of Music, Boston. He began writing while living in India, where he spent four years as a Buddhist monk, studying Tibetian texts at the Institute of Buddhist Dialects in Dharamsala.
His first book in English, Turtle Feet, about his experience in India was published in 2008 by Riverhead. Wunderkind, his new novel published in 2011 by Free Press, is a roman a clef about music, obsession, genius and growing up behind the Iron curtain as a piano prodigy. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Brown University.
“We would kiss slowly, like scientists who analyzed the chemistry of passion, the electricity of desperation, the heat of loneliness, the sudden fluidity of time.”
“Youth is feeling seventy years old, misanthropic, and ready to die at fifteen”
“Because if we were all created idealists, then life was bound to be one relentless disappointment. But then, there was also music. We unlearned the lies with one hand and repeated them with the other.”
“I don't know why people are so afraid of dying. It only takes a moment. ”
“So in reality the one constant is existence- it changes its form, but can never be created or destroyed. And what's more important is that, just like the quantity of energy is a constant, the taste of existence is a constant, too. It can never change. You think it's going to make a difference if you're poor or rich or dying or in hell or in Nirvana, but the fact of the matter is, it never does, the universe is like this metaphysical reactor where opposites cancel each other, pleasure is canceled by pain, highs by lows, reality by emptiness, Enlightenment by inexhaustible boredom, and at the end it all adds up to zero. Heaven isn't going to be too sweet, hell can't be too bad. It's like this: the rich have everything but are desensitized, the lepers have got nothing but are closer to life- they feel every passing moment in their bones. Monks are missing one thing, laypeople are missing another. Ordinary beings are stuck on this shore, the Buddha is stuck on the shore beyond. You could say that everyone is fucked in some way, or you could say that everyone's in a state of equilibrium. It makes no difference, really.”
“The mind is a strange thing: it works in secret. Oftentimes the most important decisions in life are made while you're not paying attention.”
“Home is simply a place where your friends wait for you to come back.”
“Before you can dispel other people's ignorance, you should first dispel your own.”