Quotes from Day Watch

“If age teaches you anything, then one of its lessons is certainly not to hurry if you're already late....”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“If you have love in you, it's a strength. But if you are in love, it's a weakness.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“You're a Dark One," said Anton. "All you see in everything is evil, treachery, trickery."

"All I do is not close my eyes to them," Edgar retorted. "And that's why I don't trust Zabulon. I distrust him almost as much as I do Gesar. I can even trust you more—you're just another unfortunate chess piece who happens by chance to be painted a different color from me. Does a white pawn hate a black one? No. Especially if the two pawns have their heads down together over a quiet beer or two."

"You know," Anton said in a slightly surprised voice, "I just don't understand how you can carry on living if you see the world like that. I'd just go and hang myself."

"So you don't have any counterarguments to offer?"

Anton took a gulp of beer too. The wonderful thing about this natural Czech beer was that even if you drank lots of it, it still didn't make your head or your body feel heavy... Or was that an illusion?

"Not a single one," Anton admitted. "Right now, this very moment, not a single one. But I'm sure you're wrong. It's just difficult to argue about the colors of the rainbow with a blind man. There's something missing in you... I don't know what exactly. But it's something very important, and without it you're more helpless than a blind man.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“That's the way it goes sometimes: in order to help your friends, first you have to help your enemy. Better get used to it.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“What an unfortunate instrument the guitar is! An instrument of such great nobility, a genuine monarch of music-- reduced to a pitiful lump of wood with six strings, constantly abused by people with no ear and no voice.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“And the simple people are trash. A herd of sheep that are good for shearing, but sometimes it's more profitable to slaughter them.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“Because love stands above Darkness and Light.
Because love is not sex or a shared faith, or "the joint maintenance of a household and the upbringing of children."
Because love is also Power.
And Light and Darkness, people and Others, morality and law, the Ten Commandments and the Great Treaty have damn all to do with it.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“Czech beer in bottles is the corpse of real beer in a glass coffin.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“Потому что любовь - она над Тьмой и Светом.
Потому что любовь - это ни секс, ни одинаковая вера, ни "совместное ведение хозяйства и воспитание детей".
Потому что любовь - это тоже Сила.
И черта с два к ней имеют отношение Свет и Тьма, люди и Иные, мораль и закон, десять заповедей и Великий Договор.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“Love was something different. Love was pure delight, a fountain of emotions, sensual delights, and enjoying spending time together.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“Loneliness, dejection, the contempt or pity of people around you--these are unpleasant feelings. But they are precisely the things that produce genuine Dark Ones.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“I had never felt such happiness, not with one man or two or three, never felt this feeling before...this feeling of...completeness? Yes, that was it, completeness! I simply didn't need anyone else.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“The only thing that restrains you is fear, Anton Gorodetsky. For yourself, or for people—that's not important. But we are restrained by horror. And that is why we observe the Treaty.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“Love is a great power, and such a strange power...”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“Experience is primarily the ability to restrain our fleeting impulses.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“Because love is also a power. A great power, and it should not be disdained.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“But I’m quite sure of one thing: If it’s possible to do something, sooner or later someone’s going to do it.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“If they do anything to me, just skin them alive, sweetheart," I said.
"I'll do more than that-- I'll make them eat their own skins.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“If you have love in you, it’s a strength. But if you are in love, it’s a weakness.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“She had never liked people who spoke too familiarly upon first meeting. There ought to be a little bit more formality.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“Maybe it was cold and miserable in the forest, but man can bring his own warmth and comfort anywhere he goes.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“Светлые считали, что надо отдавать свою жизнь на растерзание другим. Что главное - отдавать, даже если берущие недостойны этого. А Темные считали, что надо просто жить. Что каждый заслуживает того, чего он добился в жизни, и не более.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

“People don't usually think about the meaning of the words they say. It seems to them that words convey truth. That when someone hears the word "red" he will think of a ripe raspberry and not a pool of blood. That the word "love" will evoke Shakespeare's sonnets and not the erotic films of Playboy. And they find themselves baffled when the word they've spoken doesn't evoke the right response.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, quote from Day Watch

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Popular quotes

“It was her last breakfast with Bapi, her last morning in Greece. In her frenetic bliss that kept her up till dawn, she’d scripted a whole conversation in Greek for her and Bapi to have as their grand finale of the summer. Now she looked at him contentedly munching on his Rice Krispies, waiting for the right juncture for launchtime.

He looked up at her briefly and smiled, and she realized something important. This was how they both liked it. Though most people felt bonded by conversation, Lena and Bapi were two of a kind who didn’t. They bonded by the routine of just eating cereal together.

She promptly forgot her script and went back to her cereal.

At one point, when she was down to just milk, Bapi reached over and put his hand on hers. ‘You’re my girl,’ he said.

And Lena knew she was.”
― Ann Brashares, quote from The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants

“This "sir, yes sir" business, which would probably sound like horseshit to any civilian in his right mind, makes sense to Shaftoe and to the officers in a deep and important way. Like a lot of others, Shaftoe had trouble with military etiquette at first. He soaked up quite a bit of it growing up in a military family, but living the life was a different matter. Having now experienced all the phases of military existence except for the terminal ones (violent death, court-martial, retirement), he has come to understand the culture for what it is: a system of etiquette within which it becomes possible for groups of men to live together for years, travel to the ends of the earth, and do all kinds of incredibly weird shit without killing each other or completely losing their minds in the process. The extreme formality with which he addresses these officers carries an important subtext: your problem, sir, is deciding what you want me to do, and my problem, sir, is doing it. My gung-ho posture says that once you give the order I'm not going to bother you with any of the details--and your half of the bargain is you had better stay on your side of the line, sir, and not bother me with any of the chickenshit politics that you have to deal with for a living. The implied responsibility placed upon the officer's shoulders by the subordinate's unhesitating willingness to follow orders is a withering burden to any officer with half a brain, and Shaftoe has more than once seen seasoned noncoms reduce green lieutenants to quivering blobs simply by standing before them and agreeing, cheerfully, to carry out their orders.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Cryptonomicon

“Don't you know that everybody's got a Fairyland of their own?”
― P.L. Travers, quote from Mary Poppins

“Why not think that sometimes—just sometimes—you can overcome evil with silence? And let people hear their hatefulness in their own ears, without distraction. Maybe goodness is enough to expose evil for what it really is, sometimes.”
― Sylvain Reynard, quote from Gabriel's Inferno

“well, and lots a-folks git well thet nobody ever thought to see out a-bed agin cept in a coffin. Still and all, common sense tells you this much: everwhat makes a wheel run over a track will make it run over a boy if’n he’s in the way. If’n you’d a-got kilt, it’d mean you jest didn’t move fast enough, like a rabbit that gits caught by a hound dog. You think God favors the dog over the rabbit, son?” I shook my head. “I don’t neither. When it comes to prayin’, we got it all over the other animals, but we ain’t no different when it comes to livin’ and dyin’. If’n you give God the credit when somebody don’t die, you go’n blame Him when they do die? Call it His will? Ever noticed we git well all the time and don’t die but once’t? Thet has to mean God always wants us to live if’n we can. Hit ain’t never His will for us to die—cept in the big sense. In the sense He was smart enough not to make life eternal on this here earth, with people and”
― Olive Ann Burns, quote from Cold Sassy Tree

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

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