Yevgeny Zamyatin > Quotes

“You are afraid of it because it is stronger than you; you hate it because you are afraid of it; you love it because you cannot subdue it to your will. Only the unsubduable can be loved.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“A human being is like a novel: until the last page you don't know how it will end. Or it wouldn't be worth reading...”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“There is no final one; revolutions are infinite.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, A Soviet Heretic: Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin

“All of life in its complexity and beauty is forever minted in the gold of words.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“There are books of the same chemical composition as dynamite. The only difference is that a piece of dynamite explodes once, whereas a book explodes a thousand times.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, A Soviet Heretic: Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin

“You're in a bad way! Apparently, you have developed a soul.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“It is an error to divide people into the living and the dead: there are people who are dead-alive, and people who are alive-alive. The dead-alive also write, walk, speak, act. But they make no mistakes; only machines make no mistakes, and they produce only dead things. The alive-alive are constantly in error, in search, in questions, in torment.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, A Soviet Heretic: Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin

“And everyone must lose his mind, everyone must! The sooner the better! It is essential — I know it.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“She moved nearer, leaned her shoulder against me — and we were one, and something flowed from her into me, and I knew: this is how it must be. I knew it with every nerve, and every hair, every heartbeat, so sweet it verged on pain. And what joy to submit to this 'must'. A piece of iron must feel such joy as it submits to the precise, inevitable law that draws it to a magnet. Or a stone, thrown up, hesitating a moment, then plunging headlong back to earth. Or a man, after the final agony, taking a last deep breath — and dying.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“And a question stirred within me: What if he, this yellow-eyed creature, in his disorderly, filthy mound of leaves, in his uncomputed life, is happier than we are?”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“Along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox—the single most worthy path of the fearless mind . . . .”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“We comes from God, I from the Devil.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“And happiness...Well, after all, desires torment us, don't they? And, clearly, happiness is when there are no more desires, not one...What a mistake, what ridiculous prejudice it's been to have marked happiness always with a plus sign. Absolute happiness should, of course, carry a minus sign — the divine minus.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“The whole world is one immense woman, and we are in her very womb, we are not yet born, we are joyfully ripening. ”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“...Those two, in paradise, were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative...”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“I am aware of myself. And, of course, the only things that are aware of themselves and conscious of their individuality are irritated eyes, cut fingers, sore teeth. A healthy eye, finger, tooth might as well not even be there. Isn't it clear that individual consciousness is just sickness?”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“The moon, our own, earthly moon is bitterly lonely, because it is alone in the sky, always alone, and there is no one to turn to, no one to turn to it. All it can do is ache across the weightless airy ice, across thousands of versts, toward those who are equally lonely on earth, and listen to the endless howling of dogs. (“A Story About The Most Important Thing”)”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, The Dragon: Fifteen Stories

“The old, slow, creaking descriptions are a thing of the past; today the rule is brevity - but every word must be supercharged, high-voltage.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, A Soviet Heretic: Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin

“What is it to you if I don't want others to want for me, if I want to want myself — if I want the impossible...”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“The sun's champagne streamed from one body into another. And there was a couple on the green silk of the grass, covered by a raspberry umbrella. Only their feet and a little bit of lace could be seen. In the magnificent universe beneath the raspberry umbrella, with closed eyes, they drank in the sparkling madness.

'Extra! Extra! Zeppelins over the North Sea at 3 o'clock.'

But under the umbrella, in the raspberry universe, they were immortal. What did it matter that in another far-away universe people would be killing each other?”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, Islanders And, The Fisher Of Men

“Happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There where no third alternative.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin

“Here I saw, with my own eyes, that laughter was the most terrible weapon: you can kill anything with laughter- even murder itself.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“They do not need the sun. Who needs the sun when the eyes glow? Darkness. A woolen fog has wrapped the earth, has dropped a heavy curtain. From far away, from beyond the curtain, comes the sound of drops falling on stone. Far, far away - the autumn, people, tomorrow. ("The North")”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, The Dragon: Fifteen Stories

“We have long become overgrown with calluses; we no longer hear people being killed. ("X")”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, The Dragon: Fifteen Stories

“It is said there are flowers that bloom only once in a hundred years. Why should there not be some that bloom once in a thousand, in ten thousand years? Perhaps we never know about then simply because this "once in a thousand years" has come today.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin

“The most wonderful thing in life is to be delirious and the most wonderful kind of delirium is being in love. In the morning mist, hazy and amorous, London was delirious. London squinted as it floated along, milky pink, without caring where it was going.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, Islanders And, The Fisher Of Men

“The knife is the most durable, immortal, the most genius thing that man created. The knife was the guillotine; the knife is the universal means of solving all knots; and along the blade of a knife lies the path of paradox - the single most worthy path of the fearless mind.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“I am like a machine being driven to excessive rotations: the bearings
are incandescing and, in a minute, melted metal will begin to drip and
everything will turn to nothing. Quick: get cold water, logic. I am
pouring it over myself by the bucketload but the logic sizzles on the
hot bearings and dissipates elusive white steam into the air.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“Now I no longer live in our clear, rational world; I live in the ancient nightmare world, the world of square roots of minus one.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“The speed of her tongue is not correctly calculated; the speed per second of her toungue should be slightly less than the speed per second of her thoughts -at any rate not the reverse.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“Gripped with bitter cold, ice-locked, Petersburg burned in delirium. One knew: out there, invisible behind the curtain of fog, the red and yellow columns, spires, and hoary gates and fences crept on tiptoe, creaking and shuffling. A fevered, impossible, icy sun hung in the fog - to the left, to the right, above, below - a dove over a house on fire. From the delirium-born, misty world, dragon men dived up into the earthly world, belched fog - heard in the misty world as words, but here becoming nothing - round white puffs of smoke. The dragon men dived up and disappeared again into the fog. And trolleys rushed screeching out of the earthly world into the unknown. ("The Dragon")”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, The Dragon: Fifteen Stories

“The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy. (“Tomorrow”)”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin

“If we have no heretics we must invent them, for heresy is essential to health and growth.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin

“Yesterday, there was a Tzar and there were slaves. Today, there is no Tzar, but the slaves are still here. Tomorrow there will be only Tzars. We walk forward in the name of the free man of tomorrow, the Tzar of tomorrow. We have gone through the epoch when the masses were oppressed. We are now going through the epoch when the individual is oppressed in the name of the masses.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, A Soviet Heretic

“Listen." I tugged at my neighbor. "Just listen to me! You must-you must give me an answer: out there, where your finite universe ends! What is out there, beyond it?”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“Don't forget that we lawyers, we're a higher breed of intellect, and so it's our privilege to lie. It's as clear as day. Animals can't even imagine lying: if you were to find yourself among some wild islanders, they too would only speak the truth until they learned about European culture.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, Islanders And, The Fisher Of Men

“In the widely open cup of the armchair was I-330. I, on the floor, embracing her limbs, my head on her lap. We were silent. Everything was silent. Only the pulse was audible. Like a crystal I was dissolving in her, in I-330. I felt most distinctly how the polished facets which limited me in space were slowly thawing, melting away. I was dissolving in her lap, in her, and I became at once smaller and larger, and larger, unembraceable. For she was not she but the whole universe. For a second I and that armchair near the bed, transfixed with joy, we were one.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“Darkness. The door into the neighboring room is not quite shut. A strip of light stretches through the crack in the door across the ceiling. People are walking about by lamplight. Something has happened. The strip moves faster and faster and the dark walls move further and further apart, into infinity. This room is London and there are thousands of doors. The lamps dart about and the strips dart across the ceiling. And perhaps it is all delirium...

Something had happened. The black sky above London burst into fragments: white triangles, squares and lines - the silent geometric delirium of searchlights. The blinded elephant buses rushed somewhere headlong with their lights extinguished. The distinct patter along the asphalt of belated couples, like a feverish pulse, died away. Everywhere doors slammed and lights were put out. And the city lay deserted, hollow, geometric, swept clean by a sudden plague: silent domes, pyramids, circles, arches, towers, battlements.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, Islanders And, The Fisher Of Men

“Then how can there be a final revolution? There is no final one; revolutions are infinite.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“Man is like a novel: up to the last page one does not know what the end will be. It would not be worth reading otherwise...”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“And happiness.. what is it, after all? Desires are a torment, aren't they? And it's clear that happiness is when there are no longer any desires, not even one... What a mistake, what a stupid prejudice it's been all these years to put a plus sign in front of happiness. Absolute happiness should of course have a minus sign, a divine minus.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“Heretics are the only [bitter] remedy against the entropy of human thought.
("Literature, Revolution, and Entropy")”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin

“Her smile was a bite, and I was its target.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“Midsummer Night was roasting hot. The shore, of red granite, glowed with the heat; the dark blood of the earth seemed to be rising from below. There was a sharp, unbearable smell of birds, of cod, of green decaying seaweed. Through the mist the huge ruddy sun loomed nearer and nearer. And in the sea, dark blood welled up to meet it - in bloated, rearing, huge white waves.
Night. The mouth of the bay between two cliffs was like a window. A window shutting out curious eyes with a white shade-white woolly fog. And all that you could see was that behind it something red was happening. ("The North")”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, The Dragon: Fifteen Stories

“The nights were long, like the braids of a pretty girl, and the days were short, like a girl's sense. ("The North")”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, The Dragon: Fifteen Stories

“But you can't plead with autumn. No. The midnight wind stalked through the woods, hooted to frighten you, swept everything away for the approaching winter, whirled the leaves. ("The North")”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“More wine for me, pour me some more!"

"You smart girl, I knew you're a smart girl, just teasing...”

Faces turn red, the dark earth blood is rising.

They wink at Pelka, wink at the host: "He knows his goods!" The women feel the buttons constricting them - they undo one, another, a third. By twos the guests go outside to get some air.

"Well, my dear guests, are you soaked to the gills? Eh? And now-to dance! Get lively!"

The table and the chairs vanish. The middle of the room is empty. Ivan the Monk jumps out of his hole, a tambourine in his hands: "Tim-ta-a-am! Tim-ta-a-am!"

“Eh-hey!" the redhead suddenly snatches the tambourine and sweeps off, tapping wildly in a circle. Eyes closed: a white sleepless sun-a white night on the meadow-white columns of smoke swaying over fires...

"Eh-ah!"-to whirl herself to death, to whirl out everything, to empty herself - nothing has ever been...

Heavy boots are thumping on the floor, beards fly in the wind, the frock-coat tails go flying... hey, get going, faster, faster - a hundred versts an hour! ("The North")”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, The Dragon: Fifteen Stories