Quotes from Yevgeny Zamyatin

Ak, kad tai iš ties? b?t? tiktai romanas, o ne dabartinis, iks?, ?-1 ir nuopuoli? pilnas mano gyvenimas.

Children are the only courageous philosophers. And courageous philosophers are invariably children. One ought always to ask like children, 'what further?' and 'what for?

Argi neskauda, kai sprogsta pumpuras?

And why then do you think there is a last revolution? There is no last revolution, their number is infinite...

Oh, knowledge! This knowledge of yours is only cowardice. Don't argue, it's true. You're simply trying to enclose infinity behind a wall, and you are terrified to glance outside the wall. Yes! Just try and take a look, and you will shut your eyes. Yes!

So what if nothing but the breadth of a knife blade separates us from the other dark side of the Zero Cliff? A knife is the most permanent, the most immortal, the most ingenious of all of man's creations. The knife was a guillotine, the knife is a universal means of resolving all knots, and the path of paradox lies along the blade of a knife—the only path worthy of the mind without fear. . . .

DüÅŸünen, görüÅŸ sahibi bir yarat???n düzensizlikler, bilinmezler, X'ler aras?nda yaÅŸamas? doÄŸaya ayk?r?d?r: Gözlerinizi baÄŸlad?klar?n? ve yürümeye, hem de hemen birkaç ad?m ötede uçurumun kenar?n?n bulunduÄŸunu bildiÄŸiniz halde el yordam?yla yürümeye zorlad?klar?n? farz edin.

One day Plapa told us about irrational numbers, and, I remember, I cried, banged my fists on the table, and screamed, "I don't want V-1"!! Take V-1 out of me!" That irrational root grew in me like something foreign, alien, terrifying. It devoured me, and you couldn't make sense of it or neutralize it, because it was completely beyond ratio.

R shook his head, scratched it. From the rear his head looks like it has a little square suitcase attached to it. (It reminds me of an old painting called "In the Carriage".) ... I looked at that tightly locked little suitcase of his and wondered, "What thoughts are turning over now in that case?

That's because no one is one but only one of. We're so identical...

I'm so happy- so happy...I'm full- you understand: to the brim. And so- I walk about and hear nothing of what's around mem because I'm always listening within, inside myself...

She was looking down at something; her eyes were lowered, like blinds. I thought suddenly of how you walk along the avenue around 22:00 hours, and among the brightly lit cages there are some dark ones, with the blinds lowered...What was going on there in her head, behind her blinds? ... Then she raised the blinds, looked up...

Haven't written here in several days, I don't know how many: All the days seem like one. All the days have one color—yellow, like parched, fiery sand. And there isn't a shred of shade, nor a drop of water, and no end of the yellow sand.

But how was I going to explain my whole being, this whole disease that I've been jotting down in these pages? So I shut up and went along peacefully. A leaf torn off a tree by a sudden gust of wind falls peacefully downward, but on the way it twists, catches at every twig, offshoot, branch that it knows. That is just how I caught at each silent spherical head, at the transparent ice of the walls, at the light blue needle of the Accumulator Tower as it thrust up into the clouds.

Thoughts rapping quietly, metallically, distinctly: a mysterious aero carries me to the blue heights of my favorite abstractions. And here in this cleanest sharp air, I see my rationale about my "rights" burst with a light pop, like a pneumatic tire. And I can see clearly that these ideas about "rights" were merely a throwback from a ridiculous superstition of the Ancients.

Your mission is to subjugate to the grateful yoke of reason the unknown beings who live on other planets, and who are perhaps still in the primitive state of freedom.

Bir o gözüne, bir ötekine bak?yor, her birinde kendimi görüyorum: gökkuÅŸa?? zindanlar?nda ufac?k, minicik bir mahpus...

Does everyone have a pain that can be wrested from within only along with their heart, and does everyone have to do something before....

felt myself. To feel one's self, to be conscious of one's personality, is the lot of an eye inflamed by a cinder, or an infected finger, or a bad tooth. A healthy eye, or finger, or tooth is not felt; it is non-existent as it were. Is it not clear then, that consciousness of oneself is a sickness?

They say there are flowers that bloom only once in a hundred years. Why not suppose the existence of flowers that bloom only once a thousand years? We may have known nothing about them until now only because today is the "once in a thousand years"?

What does it matter to you that I'll stay here alone? What does it matter to you if I don't want others to want on my behalf, but want to want for myself-if I want the impossible .....

Yesterday was to me like the paper through which chemists filter their solutions: all suspended particles, all that is superfluous remains on this paper. And this morning I went downstairs freshly distilled, transparent.

What difficulties our predecessors had in making music! They were able to compose only by bringing themselves to attacks of inspiration, an extinct form of epilepsy.

But, to begin with, I am incapable of jokes, for every joke contains a lie as an implicit function.