Quotes from Andrey Kurkov

Putin's calculation is simple: a Ukraine with a permanent war in its eastern region will never be fully welcomed by Europe or the rest of the world.

Even reading the news feed on the Internet, you can sense which information is credible among all the thousands of propagandist lies.

Longevity depended on peace. Peace was the source of self-assurance, and self-assurance allowed one to cleanse one's life of needless upsets, twists and turns. Self-assurance allowed one to take decisions for the prolonging of one's life. Self-assurance led to the future.

The once terrible was now commonplace, meaning that people accepted it as the norm and went on living, instead of getting needlessly agitated.

No computers?" Zhora asked in amazement, touring the house in search of where to establish himself. "My games I play live," said Andrey Pavlovich

The full story is what you get told only if and when your work, and with it your existence, are no longer required.

I do not want to believe everything I read in the press. The papers, particularly the online editions, publish a lot of false news.

There had been nothing but snow, and if you looked at it long enough, you would begin to hear a white noice - a kind of silence that takes hold of your soul with its cold hands and doesn't release it for a long time.

So they blew something up, he thought. Wasn't that close - just a big-calibre gun. If it had been close, it would have thrown me out of bed. And if the shell had hit the house, I'd have stayed in my dream, where it's cosier and warmer than in life.

Sergeyich diluted his bitter thoughts with honey and felt better.

The crackly, unobtrusive music of the fire was now accompanied by a barely audible chorus of bee-wings emerging from the hives.

No matter, said the old man hoarsely. Means you're still alive if it hurts.

But I can do it," she said, sitting down on the carpet again. "It's just that I'm heavier after breakfast.

All's well! You're sold into slavery! We can go, they're expecting you." "How do you mean, slavery?" "It's the way they put it here. Chechen men don't work, slaves work for them. If I'd offered them you without charge, they wouldn't have trusted me. They'd have taken you for Fed Security.

News you can't read calmly, don't read at all!

To every time, its own normality.

Women are the strength of the male nervous system. Time you took your nerves in hand Ã¢â'¬Â¦ Still, just my little joke.

Odd times to be a child in. An odd country, an odd life which he had no desire to make sense of. To endure, full stop, that was all he wanted.

Only this time Russia has not been able to – and will not be able to – find another Ribbentrop and another Molotov to conclude a new pact prepared by the Kremlin.