Vita Nostra (Vita Nostra, #1)

by Marina Dyachenko

“Has it ever occurred to you that we live inside a text?”

if entities can be manifested, then they can probably be formed anew. It must be possible to create new entities, rather than simply project ideas. I am a projector, a motion-picture camera. Right now, I project shadows on the screen. But can someone make entities out of nothing?

“All girls are mad. Each in her own way.

Every person is a word, simply a word. And others are punctuation marks.”

you were a verb in the imperative mood. You are an imperative, Sasha. “You are a command.”

You are a command, a part of the Speech of Creation.

You are a projection of the Word that is destined to reverberate. And every day you get closer to the original. You are a foundation upon which an entire universe can be built. And this cannot be explained, Sasha, it can only be understood.”

There are words that are simply trash, refuse, they turn into nothing immediately after they are spoken.

Others throw shadows, hideous and pathetic, and sometimes gorgeous and powerful, capable of saving a dying soul. But only a few of these words become human beings and pronounce other words.

Speech as a multilevel system of efforts that either alter the world or prevent it from changing.”

What a depressing way to go through life, hoping for ideas.

The world is full of someone’s acquaintances and relatives who exist—and yet they don’t. People don’t write or call for years, and no one really cares. But they do exist—somewhere.

“Fear is a projection of danger,” he continued, “genuine or imagined.

“Time is a grammatical concept. Is that clear, or do I need to explain?” “It’s clear.”

“The language of creation knows no grammatical tense. It has only one mood—the imperative.

“But does name exist in time?” “Yes. Realized name becomes a process.”

“There is motion and static. Action and its object. The speed, mass, and length of a wave. Names are building blocks of creation. Verb is a command to build, a will in its purest form. An impulse. Concentrated action. Verb can pull a name out of nonexistence, and it can send it into nonexistence by a single command. All the verbs I’ve ever known were egocentric, narcissistic, and meant to succeed. Geared toward creation at any cost.”

Memories are projections of events, and in this case it is much less important whether the events are real or not.”

“Emotional memory,” Portnov murmured. “You have already become a butterfly, but are still trying to crawl. You remember being a caterpillar. Samokhina, get ahold of yourself. We are losing time, and this session has a time limit, don’t you agree?”

they will come out of their human skin and become Words, tools of Speech, the bones and tendons of a highly complex text that is called reality. Words know no fear, and no death. Words are free and conform only to Speech. And Speech—Sasha knew this!—is the core of harmony.

Unlike words, people actually die, but Farit Kozhennikov is not a word! He’s a rule, a grammatical rule.

“All people have been manifested out loud some time ago. And they continue saying words, having no idea about their true meaning.”

If she was sorry about anything, it was about words that lingered unspoken.

You will be eternal. You will become Word and will accomplish your mission. You are a tool of Speech, an instrument of divine harmony. You are a participant of creation, and that means you will be.

To live is to be vulnerable. To love is to fear. And the one who is not afraid—that person is calm like a boa constrictor and cannot love.”

“Yes. She is Password.”

“Greetings, Password.”

To live is to be vulnerable.

Because for me to love is to be afraid.”

“Do not be afraid.”

patiently listening to my endless lectures on the finer points of everything that had been lost in translation.