Sergei Lukyanenko

“Do you remember the fairy tale about the mermaid? A witch gave her legs, she could walk, but she felt like there were red hot knives stabbing into her feet all the time. That story's about us, Maxim! We always walk over sharp knives, and that's something you can never get used to. But Hans Christian Anderson didn't tell the whole story. The witch could have done things differently: the mermaid walks, and the knives stab other people. That's the way of the Dark.”

“That's how myths are born. Out of our carelessness, out of our tattered nerves, out of jokes that go wrong and flashy gestures.”

“We'll get into the plane and you'll have a cup of coffee, even a sip of brandy is permissible. And you'll think. Think hard. So hard I can hear your brains creaking. And it will be very good if by the time we reach Edinburgh you already know how to get the Crown of All Things. Because we don't have any time to spare. Only twelve hours until the bomb goes off.""You bastard," I said."No, I'm a highly effective personnel manager," Edgar said, with a smile.”

“Because love is also a power. A great power, and it should not be disdained.”

“[after guard dogs frozen mid-attack] 'How long are the dogs going to stay hanging there like that?' ask Yulia. 'I want to make friends with them. Otherwise, i'll be left with a latent psychological complex that's bound to affect my personality and sexual preferences.”

“Die Prophezeiung muss grauenvoll gewesen sein", sagte Arina, um nach einer Weile hinzuzufügen. "Die Zeiten damals waren sehr schwer.""Leichte Zeiten gibt es nicht", stellte Fan klar.”

“The hardest thing of all is when pain is hidden behind a mask of calm.”

“I believe it, she's a very good person, kind. There's weariness there, but no bitterness or spite. When you're with a girl like that you feel like a different person. You try to be better, and that's a strain. Men prefer to be friends with her kind, flirt a bit, share confidences. They don't often fall in love with girls like that, but everybody loves them.”

“When people got old, why did they always develop a passion for scrabbling in the earth? Were they trying to get used to it?”

“We are our own gods and our own demons”

“I can't see the line between deliberate intention and coincidence.”

“Forgiving was the hardest thing. Sometimes forgiving was the hardest thing in the whole world.”

“He looked just perfect to play Dorian Gray in a film version of Oscar Wilde's novel. Young, graceful, and indecently fresh and handsome, he could easily have worn a badge that said READY FOR DEBAUCHERY!”

“After all, inside every woman, no matter how grown up she is, there is still a frightened little girl.”

“You're on your own little quest, an there's a bit of Frodo Baggins in you, and a bit of Verne's Paganel, and just a tiny drop of Robinson Cursoe, and a smidgeon of Radishchev.”

“That's the hardest thing of all--never to become cynical, never to lose faith, never to become indifferent.”

“I get the same buzz cleaning up the yard as Leo Tolstoy did from scything hay.”

“Being on the side of the Light is much tougher than being on the side of the Dark...”

“I had never felt such happiness, not with one man or two or three, never felt this feeling before...this feeling of...completeness? Yes, that was it, completeness! I simply didn't need anyone else.”

“Love is a great power, and such a strange power...”

“Love was something different. Love was pure delight, a fountain of emotions, sensual delights, and enjoying spending time together.”

“Loneliness, dejection, the contempt or pity of people around you--these are unpleasant feelings. But they are precisely the things that produce genuine Dark Ones.”

“The only thing that restrains you is fear, Anton Gorodetsky. For yourself, or for people—that's not important. But we are restrained by horror. And that is why we observe the Treaty.”

“You're a Dark One," said Anton. "All you see in everything is evil, treachery, trickery.""All I do is not close my eyes to them," Edgar retorted. "And that's why I don't trust Zabulon. I distrust him almost as much as I do Gesar. I can even trust you more—you're just another unfortunate chess piece who happens by chance to be painted a different color from me. Does a white pawn hate a black one? No. Especially if the two pawns have their heads down together over a quiet beer or two.""You know," Anton said in a slightly surprised voice, "I just don't understand how you can carry on living if you see the world like that. I'd just go and hang myself.""So you don't have any counterarguments to offer?"Anton took a gulp of beer too. The wonderful thing about this natural Czech beer was that even if you drank lots of it, it still didn't make your head or your body feel heavy... Or was that an illusion?"Not a single one," Anton admitted. "Right now, this very moment, not a single one. But I'm sure you're wrong. It's just difficult to argue about the colors of the rainbow with a blind man. There's something missing in you... I don't know what exactly. But it's something very important, and without it you're more helpless than a blind man.”

“But even if we were to disappear, people would still be divided into people and Others. No matter how those Others were different.People can't get by without Others. Put two people on an uninhabited island, and you'll have a human being and an Other. And the difference is that an Other is always tormented by his differentness. It's easier for people. They know they're people, and that's what they ought to be. And they all have no choice but to be that way. All of them, forever.”

“There are far more reasons for death than there are for life.”

“Would any grown girl in Russia be frightened by a "room of horror"? Westerner's lives are too calm and peaceful, is makes them afraid of all sorts of nonsense...”

“Haggis" is a brand of nappies.' I said. 'They're good, we used them for our daughter.''Haggis is a kind of food too,' said Semyon, shaking his head. 'Although as far as taste goes, there's probably not much difference.”

“A car's not the right place for showing off to a girl—the bed's the place for that. The consequences of a mistake there are more upsetting, but less tragic.”

“Czech beer in bottles is the corpse of real beer in a glass coffin.”

“If age teaches you anything, then one of its lessons is certainly not to hurry if you're already late....”

“If you have love in you, it's a strength. But if you are in love, it's a weakness.”

“An assassin can be found for every president. And for every prophet there are a thousand interpreters to distort the essence of the religion, to replace the bright flame with the heat of the inquisitors' pyres. The time came when every book was cast into the fire, when every symphony was reduced to a popular tune and played in all the drinking dens. A sound philosophical basis could be set in place under any vile nonsense.”

“Why was is that the Light acted through lies, and the Darkness acted though the truth? Why was is that our truth proved powerless, but lies were effective? And why was the Darkness able to manage perfectly well with truth in order to do Evil?”

“Do you have a truth of your own, Anton? Tell me, do you? Are you certain of it? Then believe it, not in my truth, not in Geser's. Believe in it and fight for it. If you have enough courage. If the idea doesn't make you shudder. What's bad about Dark freedom is not just that it's freedom from others. That's another explanation for little children. Dark freedom is first and foremost freedom from yourself, from your own conscience and your own soul. The moment you can't feel any pain in your chest—call for help. Only by then it'll be too late”

“Because love stands above Darkness and Light.Because love is not sex or a shared faith, or "the joint maintenance of a household and the upbringing of children."Because love is also Power.And Light and Darkness, people and Others, morality and law, the Ten Commandments and the Great Treaty have damn all to do with it.”

“How wonderful it would be if everything could always be as clear and simple as it used to be when you were twelve years old, or twenty years old. If there really were only two colors in the world: black and white. But even the most honest and ingenuous cop, raised on the resounding ideal of the stars and stripes, has to understand sooner or later that there's more than just Darkness and Light out on the streets. There are understandings, concessions, agreements. Informers, traps, provocations. Sooner or later the time comes when you have to betray your own side, plant bags of heroin in pockets, and beat people on the kidneys—carefully, so there are no marks.”

“Ileż to już razy widziałem, co robi z ludźmi pragnienie życia, a ciągle nie mogę przestać się dziwić. Zrezygnowanie z siebie, złożenie siebie w ofierze, męczeństwo - to się zdarza w żywotach świętych i bajkach dla dzieci. A w życiu bardzo rzadko, zazwyczaj w szale walki, w ataku wściekłości. Wtedy prosty żołnierz, który nie ma za sobą ani starożytnego rodu, ani szlachectwa, kładzie się piersią na kulomiot, torując drogę towarzyszom. Wtedy ludzie wbiegają do płonących budynków, skaczą w odmęty, z uśmiechem idą na szafot. Wsciekłość! Wsciekłość i nienawiść - tylko one tworzą prawdziwe męczeństwo.”

“That's the way it goes sometimes: in order to help your friends, first you have to help your enemy. Better get used to it.”

“There is no abstract Evil; you have to understand that! Its roots are here, all around us, in this herd that goes on chewing and having a good time only an hour after a murder! That's what you have to fight for. For people. Evil is a hydra with many heads, and the more of them you cut off, the more it grows! Hydras have to be starved to death, do you understand that? Kill a hundred Dark Ones, and a thousand more will take their place.”

“What an unfortunate instrument the guitar is! An instrument of such great nobility, a genuine monarch of music-- reduced to a pitiful lump of wood with six strings, constantly abused by people with no ear and no voice.”

“If they do anything to me, just skin them alive, sweetheart," I said."I'll do more than that-- I'll make them eat their own skins.”

“And the simple people are trash. A herd of sheep that are good for shearing, but sometimes it's more profitable to slaughter them.”

“What kind of monster are you anyway? You should be more humane, Gennady!""I was humane when I was alive," said the vampire.”

“This one swears like a trooper-- he's a bad boy.”

“Who's James Bond?" Zabulon inquired.”

“—Numer jeden — rzekł Siemion, wyciągając z plastykowej siatki z reklamą jogurtu „Danone-Kids" butelkę wódki. — Smirnowka. —Rekomendujesz? — spytałem ze zwątpieniem. Nie uważam się za specjalistę od wódek. —Już ją dwieście lat piję. A przedtem była znacznie gorsza, możesz mi wierzyć. Zaraz pojawiły się dwie szklanki z rżniętego szkła, dwulitrowy słoik, gdzie pod zaklepaną metalową pokrywką znajdowały się ściśnięte maleńkie ogóreczki, duża torba z kiszoną kapustą. —A popitka? — spytałem. —Wódki się nie popija, chłopcze — pokiwał głową Siemion. — Popija się podróbki.”

“Of course we got drunk!" Semyon said. "It's okay to get drunk, Anton. If you need to real bad. Only you have to get drunk on vodka. Cognac and wine—that's all for the heart.""So what's vodka for?""For the soul. If it's hurting real bad”

“Many years ago someone told me something that I flatly refused to accept. And I still don't accept it now, despite all the times I've seen it proved right."The common good and the individual good rarely coincide..."Sure, I know, it's true.But some truths are probably worse than lies.”

“What was my truth worth, if I was prepared to defend the entire world, but not those who were close to me? If I subdued hate, but wouldn't give love a chance?”