Quotes from Yevgeny Zamyatin

How can there be a final revolution? There is no final one; revolutions are infinite.

In England, I built ships, looked at ruined castles, listened to the thud of bombs dropped by German zeppelins, and wrote The Islanders. I regret that I did not see the February Revolution, and know only the October Revolution (I returned to Petersburg, past German submarines, in a ship with lights out, wearing a life belt the whole time, just in time for October). This is the same as never having been in love and waking up one morning already married for ten years or so.

it is twenty-two-thirty. Till tomorrow, then. Record Four The Wild Man with a Barometer – Epilepsy – If * * * * * * * Until today everything in life seemed to me clear (that is why, I think, I always had a sort of partiality toward the word "clear"), but today...

A human being is made as absurdly as these preposterous "apartments"; human heads are opaque, with only tiny windows in them—the eyes.

And explaining them - I now feel myself duty-bound to do it, if only because I am the author of these records, to say nothing of the fact that the unknown is in general the enemy of man, and Homo sapiens is not fully man until his grammar is absolutely rid of question marks, leaving nothing but exclamation points, commas, and periods.

Ä°nsan son sayfas?na kadar ne olaca?? bilinmeyen bir roman gibidir. BaÅŸka türlü olsayd? okunmaya deÄŸmezdi...

Everything will again be simple, regular and limited like a circle.

What is it that people beg for, dream about, torment themselves for, from the time they leave swaddling clothes? They want someone to tell them, once and for all, what happiness is—and then to bind them to that happiness with a chain.

Is it not clear then, that consciousness of oneself is a sickness?

But how explain all of myself, all of my sickness, recorded in these pages? And I subsided and walked obediently. ... A leaf torn off a tree by a sudden blast of wind obediently falls downward, but on the way it whirls, catches at every familiar branch, fork, knot And I, too, was catching at every silent spherical head, at the transparent ice of the walls, at the blue spire of the Accumulator Tower piercing a cloud.

Freedom and crime are so indissolubly connected to each other, like . . . well, like the movement of the aero and its velocity. When the velocity of the aero = 0, it doesn't move; when the freedom of a person = 0, he doesn't commit crime. This is clear. The sole means of ridding man of crime is to rid him of freedom.

viteza pe secunda a limbii trebuie sa fie intotdeauna ceva mai mica decat viteza pe secunda a gandirii, in nici un caz invers.

The function of man's highest faculty, his reason, consists precisely of the continuous limitation of infinity, the breaking up of infinity into convenient, easily digestible portions.

I ask you: what did people—from their very infancy—pray for, dream about, long for? They longed for some one to tell them, once and for all, the meaning of happiness, and then to bind them to it with a chain.

Copiii sunt singurii filozofi care au curaj. Si filozofii curajosi sunt neaparat niste copii.

If only I had a mother, the way the ancients had. I mean my own mother. And if for her I could be —not the Builder of the Integral, and not number D-503, and not a molecule of the One State, but just a piece of humanity, a piece of her own self, trampled, crushed, outcast . . .

Then a momentary curtain of cotton-wadding clouds-through it- and the sun was shining in a blue sky. Seconds, minutes, miles—and the blue was quickly becoming firm and suffused with darkness, the stars were emerging like drops of cold silver sweat.

The shadows had sharp corners all cut out of the blue autumnal air and were so fragile you were afraid to touch them for fear they'd shatter into glass powder and blow away.

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?

To be original means to distinguish yourself from others. It follows that to be original is to violate the principle of equality.

A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don't know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn't even be worth reading.

You are afraid of it because it is stronger than you; you hate it because you are afraid of it; you love it because you cannot subdue it to your will. Only the unsubduable can be loved.

There is no final one; revolutions are infinite.

True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics.