Vita Nostra Quotes

To live is to be vulnerable. A thin membrane of a soap bubble separates one from impenetrable hell. Ice on the road. The unlucky division of an aging cell. A child picks up a pill from the floor. Words stick to each other, line up, obedient to the great harmony of speech...

There are concepts that cannot be imagined but can be named. Having received a name, they change, flow into a different entity, and cease to correspond to the name, and then they can be given another, different name, and this process—the spellbinding process of creation—is infinite: this is the word that names it, and this is the word that signifies. A concept as an organism, and text as the universe.

I’m serious, Sasha: what is so important about being human? Is it because you simply haven’t experienced anything else?

But no one had ever been saved by memories, no one had been protected by words and pledges, and those loved greatly by others died too.

By verbally identifying an object, by giving it a name, we alter it. And at the same time we prevent it from changing. A name is like a forked stick that we use to hold a snake on the ground.

Sasha, the world is full of entities that people cannot negotiate with. But somehow people survive, don’t they?

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. And everyone in the world has a chance of encountering someone whom he himself spoke out loud . . .

The world, as you see it, is not real. And the way you imagine it—it does not even come close. Certain things seem obvious to you, but they simply do not exist.”

“And you, do you not exist?” Sasha couldn’t help herself. “Are you not real?”

Portnov removed the scarf from her face. Under his gaze, she blinked confusedly.

“I exist,” he said seriously. “But I am not at all what you think.

Love is not when you are aroused by someone, it’s when you are afraid for that person.

This institution of higher education had no such concept as mercy.

Nothing corporeal has any significant value. Anything that is truly valuable is beyond material substance . . .

She knew herself to be a word spoken by the sunlight. She laughed at the fear of death. She understood what she was born for and what she was destined to carry out. All this happened while the lightning remained in the sky, a white flash.

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

To her, existence consisted of days, and each day seemed to run like a circular ribbon—or, better yet, a bike chain, moving evenly over the cogs. Click—another change of speed, days became a little different, but they still flowed, still repeated, and that very monotony concealed the meaning of life . . .