Memories of the Future Quotes

“Quantin crept closer to the knoll. A pungent smell passed through his nostrils up into his brain. Attracted by the poppies' scarlet smears, he was about to take another step when he felt a hand on his elbow. A man in a poppy-red jacket, his pupils dilated, smiled warningly.
"No strangers allowed. Go away."
"I don't understand..."
"Understanding is strictly forbidden. Even dreams have the right to dream. Isn't that so? Now go away.”
― Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Memories of the Future

“Understanding is strictly forbidden. Even dreams have the right to dream.”
― Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Memories of the Future

“Oh no.' Straight raised his eyes to me, and a slight smile touched the corners of his lips. 'A philosophy of life is more terrible than syphilis and people - you have to give them credit - take every precaution not to become infected. Especially by a philosophy of life.”
― Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Memories of the Future

“Он понимал все сказанные ему слова и не понимал смысла: как может меньшее заступить дорогу большему, как может их маленькая революция помешать его великой, которую он несет меж своих висков, которая над всем над; что они могут, люди, развесившие флаги, кроме как отмстить трем-четырем столетиям и выкликать грядущее - только выкликать? А он - его машина - бросит человечество через века и века вперед.”
― Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Memories of the Future

“His briefcase, now very worn though not particularly old, continued to direct his endless outgoings and incomings, from the four legs of his bed to the four legs of his office desk and back again. His key went from lock to pocket, and back to the lock. Then one day there yawned before the key not a lock and not a pocket but, shall we say, an abyss. One might, of course, having slipped one’s key into the abyss, turn it twice from left to right. The resident did just that, but… we mustn’t violate the logic of chronos or, as it’s generally known, chronological order.”
― Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Memories of the Future

“ДА ЗДРАВСТВУЕТ ВЛАСТЬ СОВЕТОВ!
ДА ЗДРАВСТВУЕТ ГИБЕЛЬ КАПИТАЛИЗМА!”
― Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Memories of the Future

“I know perfectly well that I can’t alter the reflection in the mirror. I know better still that if I strike that reflection, I’ll—”

“Break the mirror.”

“Worse: I’ll leave myself open not to the mirror but to what it reflects.”
― Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Memories of the Future

“Haven’t you noticed how in the last few years our life has been permeated by nonexistence? Little by little, on the sly. We’re still immured in our old space, like the stumps in a felled forest. But our lives have long since been stacked in piles, and not for us but for others. This wristwatch with its pulsating minute hand is still mine, but time is not, it belongs to someone else who will not let you or me into a single one of its seconds. What is death, after all? A special case of hopelessness. Nothing more. And aren’t we, members of the intelligentsia, whose name still recalls the ancient word intellegentia, aren’t we all inscribed in hopelessness? More and more people, less and less land. It’s becoming so crowded that one cannot be and be conscious at the same time. Well, they can have being; I prefer not to be, but to be conscious.”
― Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Memories of the Future

“Resignation to one’s fate takes practice. Like any art. Or so citizen Shushashin maintains. He begins every day—after putting on his shoes and washing his face, before throwing on his jacket—with an exercise. Again, the expression is his. This exercise works like this: he walks over to the wall, puts his back up against it and stands there in an attitude of utter resignation. For a minute or two. And that’s all. The exercise is over. He can begin to live.”
― Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Memories of the Future

“Sweet dreams cannot withstand reality, sleepy reveries wear out faster than socks; whereas a heavy dream, a simple but well-made nightmare, is easily assimilated by life.”
― Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Memories of the Future

“I took his hand, and for a long time we held each other’s gaze. He understood.

“So there’s no hope?”

“None”

I hadn’t gone more than a dozen paces when—through the noise and hubbub of the square—his voice overtook me.

“And even so!”

I turned around.

He was standing on the curb, smiling brightly and serenely, and repeating, no longer to me, but to the starburst of streets before him: “And even so.”

Those were our final parting words.”
― Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Memories of the Future

“For aren’t we, the poets, like elegant wreaths erring from grave to grave? Don’t we, too, with all our meanings and with all our being, nestle beside the dead and buried? No, no. I shall never agree with the briefcases’ current philosophy: one can write only about the crossed-out and only for the crossed-out.”
― Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Memories of the Future

“In their sleep and in their fear, the occupants of the quadratures adjacent to citizen Sutulin’s eighty-six square feet couldn’t make head or tail of the timbre and intonation of the cry that woke them in the middle of the night and compelled them to rush to the threshold of the Sutulin cell: for a man who is lost and dying in the wilderness to cry out is both futile and belated: but if even so—against all sense—he does cry out, then, most likely, thus.”
― Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Memories of the Future

“Ведь слова обращаются медленнее, чем монеты”
― Сигизмунд Кржижановский, Воспоминания о будущем. Избранное из неизданного

“Сколько гривенников, столько миросозерцаний”
― Сигизмунд Кржижановский, Воспоминания о будущем. Избранное из неизданного

“Кстати, ведь все.. выжившие или, точнее, выжитые из своих умов, выселенные, так сказать, из всех двенадцати кантовских категорий рассудка, естественно, принуждены ютиться в какой-нибудь тринадцатой категории, этакой логической боковушке, лишь кой-как прислонённой к объективно обязательному мышлению.”
― Сигизмунд Кржижановский, Воспоминания о будущем. Избранное из неизданного

“Сегодня вам придёт в голову улыбнуться в общественном месте, а завтра вы выйдете на улицу голыми!”
― Сигизмунд Кржижановский, Воспоминания о будущем. Избранное из неизданного

“Мы давно не встречались: я и моя книжная закладка”
― Сигизмунд Кржижановский, Воспоминания о будущем. Избранное из неизданного

“Glory to the unwakeable.”
― Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Memories of the Future