A Dictator Calls Quotes

“The only remaining route to Moscow, which even the most terrifying tanks couldn't reach, was the novel.”
― Ismail Kadare, A Dictator Calls

“Meanwhile, things believable only in books and never in real life were giving way nothings in real life that would not be believed in books.”
― Kadare Ismail, A dictator calls

“This was a special kind of murder. The merest scratch is enough to kill any haemophiliac, and Lenin knew this. But he had no compunction about ordering the firing of countless machine-gun bullets that would cause thousands of deaths as well as that of the child-tsar. ‘And I imagine how this man, now at the summit of power, had been on some dark alley in Zurich a few years before, face to face with some tiny prostitute, this ordinary, timid little man with a few words of German: “What’s your price, girl?” Disgusting isn’t it? Yet this jerk with thinning hair, in this sole moment where he shows some humanity, when a little European whore is about to share her syphilis, seems an angel compared to that repellent leader of Russia with his percentages. ‘ “Little whore, you came too late. Too late by several years.” ’ I was stunned and couldn’t grasp what he meant.”
― Ismail Kadare, A Dictator Calls

“Language had a role to play in all this, the written language of course, but especially the spoken form. Some of the most problematic words created unimaginable difficulties, such as ‘gentleman’, ‘lady’ or ‘miss’, to cite only three. These words were rightly considered significant obstacles in the transition to communism. Each communist country had had its own experience of its language, often strange, as in the case of Albania. This little country, generally famous for its failings and backwardness, took an unexpected approach to these three words. Whereas the word ‘gentleman’ disappeared from currency in the very first phase of socialism, like in the Soviet Union, the word ‘lady’ had a certain staying power. But the nicest surprise turned out to be the word ‘miss’. There was a determined effort to replace it, because in Albanian it carried the affectionate connotations of the word ‘mother’, especially in primary schools. Despite the annoyance it caused, it was used by tens of thousands of little children instead of the word ‘teacher’. Efforts to supplant it failed one after another. The children stubbornly continued to call their teachers ‘miss’. It was this army of countless toddlers that proved indomitable, and the word ‘miss’ with its striking”
― Ismail Kadare, A Dictator Calls

“And a cursory glance at Karl Marx shows that a man who had dedicated his life to the violent overthrow of the world order never devoted half a page in any of his dozens of books to the trauma and remorse caused by the shedding of human blood.

Not to understand this means not only failing to learn anything from Homer and Dante, but something much worse. Karl Marx proposed for humanity a huge slaughter without adding a simple human warning: beware of qualms of conscience!”
― Ismail Kadare, A Dictator Calls