Simon > Simon's Quotes

“There was nothing: just an empty, dark tunnel he was supposed to plod his way through, from “Birth” station to “Death” station. Those looking for faith had simply been trying to find the side branches in this line. But there were only two stations, and only tunnel connecting them.”
― Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033

“Noch immer hallte in ihm Drons letzte Klage nach. Seine Verzweiflung, seine Enttäuschung, seine Unfähigkeit zu glauben, dass der Mensch in dieser furchtbaren, düsteren Welt ganz alleine war, gingen auf Artjom über. So merkwürdig es war - erst durch das Schreien dieses Wilden, erfüllt von hoffnungsloser Sehnsucht nach einer hässlichen, erfundenen Gottheit, begann er jenes kosmische Gefühl der Einsamkeit zu begreifen, das den menschlichen Glauben nährte.”
― Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033

“Now Bigwig’s put their backs up, and they’ll think they’ve got to go on because he makes them. I want them to go on because they can see it’s the only thing to do.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“Rabbits live close to death and when death comes closer than usual, thinking about survival leaves little room for anything else.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“Well, there’s another place—another country, isn’t there? We go there when we sleep; at other times, too; and when we die.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“„Nicht Weisheit und Erfahrung sprachen aus ihm, sondern Alter und Müdigkeit.”
― Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033

“A wild animal that feels that it no longer has any reason to live reaches in the end a point when its remaining energies may actually be directed toward dying.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“These were strange, freakish, and dangerous creatures, the likes of which might well have brought Darwin himself to despair with their obvious lack of conformity to the laws of evolutionary development. As much as these beasts might differ from the animals humans were used to, and whether they had been reborn under the invisible and ruinous rays of sunlight, turned from inoffensive representatives of urban fauna into the spawn of hell, or whether they had always dwelled in the depths, only now to be disturbed by man – still, they were an evident part of life on earth.”
― Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033

“The rabbits mingled naturally. They did not talk for talking's sake, in the artificial manner that human beings - and sometimes even their dogs and cats - do. But this did not mean that they were not communicating; merely that they were not communicating by talking.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“Many human beings say that they enjoy the winter, but what they really enjoy is feeling proof against it. For them there is no winter food problem. They have fires and warm clothes. The winter cannot hurt them and therefore increases their sense of cleverness and security. For birds and animals, as for poor men, winter is another matter. Rabbits, like most wild animals, suffer hardship.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“Getting a new version of the answer every day, Artyom was unable to compel himself to believe what was true, because the next day another, no less precise and comprehensive one, might arise. Whom should he believe? And in what? ... Any faith served man only as a crutch supporting him. ... He understood why man needs this support. Without it, life would have become empty, like an abandoned tunnel.”
― Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033

“„Jeder, der Licht braucht, muss es selbst mitbringen. Und genauso verhält es sich mit der Zeit: Wer Zeit braucht, weil er das Chaos fürchtet, bringt seine Zeit mit”
― Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2033

“My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed.”
― Richard Adams, Watership Down

“Sein Verhältnis zu Jelena war von einer sanften Zärtlichkeit geprägt gewesen, aber sie hatten sich einfach zu spät kennengelernt, um sich rückhaltlos zu lieben. In ihrem Alter war es nicht mehr darum gegangen, ihre Leidenschaft zu stillen; sie waren zusammengekommen, um die Schatten der Vergangenheit hinter sich zu lassen und ihre Einsamkeit zu lindern.”
― Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2034

“Auch wir selbst sind ja nicht das Urbild, nach dem alle folgenden Kopien erstellt werden, sondern nur eine Chimäre, jeweils zur Hälfte bestehend aus inneren und äußeren Merkmalen unserer Väter und Mütter, genauso wie jene ihrerseits aus den Hälften ihrer Eltern bestehen. Gibt es somit in uns gar nichts Einzigartiges, sondern nur eine endlose Mischung winziger Mosaiksteinchen, die unabhängig von uns existieren und sich zu Milliarden zufälliger Bilder zusammensetzen, welche ihrerseits keinen eigenen Wert besitzen und sofort wieder zerfallen?”
― Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2034

“Das Mehrparteiensystem ist eine elegante Sache. Wie eine Hydra. Such dir einen Kopf nach deinem Geschmack aus, und kämpfe mit den anderen Köpfen.”
― Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2035

“Wie sonst sollen wir mit unseren Leuten fertig werden? Ständig muss man sie ablenken. Zügeln. Kanalisieren sozusagen. Ihnen irgendeine Idee unterjubeln. Eine Religion oder Ideologie. Immer wieder neue Feinde für sie erfinden. Sie können einfach nicht ohne Feinde! Ohne Feinde verlieren sie sich! Können sich nicht mehr definieren. Wissen nichts über sich selbst.”
― Dmitry Glukhovsky, Metro 2035

“There’s a need to understand, but that doesn’t require knowledge. The God hypothesis, for example, allows you to have an unparalleled understanding of absolutely everything while knowing absolutely nothing … Give a man a highly simplified model of the world and interpret every event on the basis of this simple model. This approach requires no knowledge. A few rote formulas, plus some so-called intuition, some so-called practical acumen, and some so-called common sense.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“In some sense, we’re all cavemen—we can’t imagine anything more frightening than a ghost or a vampire. But the violation of the principle of causality—that’s actually much scarier than a whole herd of ghosts… or Rubinstein’s monsters… or is that Wallenstein?”

“Frankenstein.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic

“There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything. There will be no one left to remember Aristotle or Cleopatra, let alone you. Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of this will have been for naught. Maybe that time is coming soon and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of our sun, we will not survive forever. There was time before organisms experienced consciousness, and there will be time after. And if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it. God knows that’s what everyone else does.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we'd done were less real and important than they had been hours before.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Manchmal war das das Schlimmste am Krebs: die Sichtbarkeit der Krankheit, die einen von den anderen absonderte. Wir waren unüberbrückbar anders”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“I went on spouting bullshit Encouragements as Gus's parents, arm in arm, hugged each other and nodded at every word. Funerals, I had decided, are for the living.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars