Anna

“He who climbs upon the highest mountains laughs at all tragedies, real or imaginary.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

“So what was in this building before historical materialism?'

'Before what?'

'You know, back then, under the old regime?'

'Oh. Under the old regime my master lived here.'

'A bourgeois?'

'You're a bourgeois yourself! He wasn't a bourgeois. He was a marshal of the nobility.'

'So he was a proletarian, then?'

'You're a proletarian yourself! I told you loud and clear, a marshal.'

The conversation with the clever dvornik with a vague understanding of the class structure of society would have lasted god knows how long if the young man hadn't made a decisive move.”
― Ilya Ilf, The Twelve Chairs

“- Кто, по-вашему, этот мощный старик? Это - гигант мысли, отец русской демократии и особа, приближенная к императору.”
― Ilia Ilf, The Twelve Chairs

“If you should attempt to maintain that film is an art in conversation with a cultured, intelligent American, he'll just plain stop talking to you.”
― Ilya Ilf, Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip: The 1935 Travelogue of Two Soviet Writers