“Love is happiness, but only when you believe it will last forever. Even though every time it turns out to be a lie, it’s only faith that gives love its strength and its joy.”
“The common good and the individual good rarely coincide.”
“Of course we got drunk!" Semyon said. "It's okay to get drunk, Anton. If you need to real bad. Only you have to get drunk on vodka. Cognac and wine—that's all for the heart."
"So what's vodka for?"
"For the soul. If it's hurting real bad”
“An introverted, bookish child, with a mass of complexes and her head full of crazy ideals and a childish faith in the beautiful prince who was searching for and would surely find her.”
“The hardest thing of all is when pain is hidden behind a mask of calm.”
“Many years ago someone told me something that I flatly refused to accept. And I still don't accept it now, despite all the times I've seen it proved right.
"The common good and the individual good rarely coincide..."
Sure, I know, it's true.
But some truths are probably worse than lies.”
“One day you will hear the sound of time rustling as it slips through your fingers like sand. Remember me then. I wish you luck.”
“I believe it, she's a very good person, kind. There's weariness there, but no bitterness or spite. When you're with a girl like that you feel like a different person. You try to be better, and that's a strain. Men prefer to be friends with her kind, flirt a bit, share confidences. They don't often fall in love with girls like that, but everybody loves them.”
“Why was is that the Light acted through lies, and the Darkness acted though the truth? Why was is that our truth proved powerless, but lies were effective? And why was the Darkness able to manage perfectly well with truth in order to do Evil?”
“What was my truth worth, if I was prepared to defend the entire world, but not those who were close to me? If I subdued hate, but wouldn't give love a chance?”
“An assassin can be found for every president. And for every prophet there are a thousand interpreters to distort the essence of the religion, to replace the bright flame with the heat of the inquisitors' pyres. The time came when every book was cast into the fire, when every symphony was reduced to a popular tune and played in all the drinking dens. A sound philosophical basis could be set in place under any vile nonsense.”
“How wonderful it would be if everything could always be as clear and simple as it used to be when you were twelve years old, or twenty years old. If there really were only two colors in the world: black and white. But even the most honest and ingenuous cop, raised on the resounding ideal of the stars and stripes, has to understand sooner or later that there's more than just Darkness and Light out on the streets. There are understandings, concessions, agreements. Informers, traps, provocations. Sooner or later the time comes when you have to betray your own side, plant bags of heroin in pockets, and beat people on the kidneys—carefully, so there are no marks.”
“There is no abstract Evil; you have to understand that! Its roots are here, all around us, in this herd that goes on chewing and having a good time only an hour after a murder! That's what you have to fight for. For people. Evil is a hydra with many heads, and the more of them you cut off, the more it grows! Hydras have to be starved to death, do you understand that? Kill a hundred Dark Ones, and a thousand more will take their place.”
“That's how myths are born. Out of our carelessness, out of our tattered nerves, out of jokes that go wrong and flashy gestures.”
“In a war the most dangerous thing is to understand the enemy. To understand is to forgive.”
“Do you have a truth of your own, Anton? Tell me, do you? Are you certain of it? Then believe it, not in my truth, not in Geser's. Believe in it and fight for it. If you have enough courage. If the idea doesn't make you shudder. What's bad about Dark freedom is not just that it's freedom from others. That's another explanation for little children. Dark freedom is first and foremost freedom from yourself, from your own conscience and your own soul. The moment you can't feel any pain in your chest—call for help. Only by then it'll be too late”
“Fairy tales lie just as much as statistics do, but sometimes you can find a grain of truth in them.”
“If we do any deed that is unconditionally good, it gives the Dark Magicians the right to do an evil deed.”
“What if every time you fought for love, you were fighting for the whole world? For the whole world - not against the whole world.”
“When we acknowledge that human beings have the right to choose, we deprive ourselves of it,”
“I’d stopped giving a damn about the human world a long time ago. It’s our basis. Our cradle. But we are Others. We walk through closed doors and we maintain the balance of Good and Evil. There are pitifully few of us, and we can’t reproduce—it”
“The common good and the individual good rarely coincide. Sure, I know it's true. But some truths are probably worse than lies.”
“„Je l' ti znaš šta je to? Biti osu�en na ljubav?
„Ali zar to nije uvijek?“ Svetlana čak zadrhta od negodovanja. „Kada se dvoje vole, kada
se pronalaze među tisućama, milijunima... To je uvijek sudbina!”
“„Ne. Sveta, jesi li ikada čula za analogiju... ljubav - to je cvijet?“
„Da.“
„Cvijet se može uzgojiti. A može se i kupiti. Ili se dobije kao poklon."
„Je l’ Anton kupio?“
„Ne“, rekoh suviše oštro, po svoj prilici, jesam... „Dobio je na poklon. Od sudbine.“
„I šta s tim? Je l' to ljubav?“
„Sveta, isječeno cvijeće je lijepo. Ali nije dugovječno. Ono ipak umire, pa makar i brižljivo
spušteno u kristalnu vazu sa sviježom vodom.“
„On se boji da voli“, zamišljeno reče Svetlana. „Je l' da? Ja se nisam bojala, zato što
nisam znala ovo...”
“Love is happiness, but only when you believe it will last forever. Even though every time it turns out to be a lie, it’s only faith that gives love its strength and its joy.”
“Konjak, vino - tako se opija srce.“
„ A votka, za šta je ona?“
„Za dušu. Ako je bol neutoljiv.”
“—Numer jeden — rzekł Siemion, wyciągając z plastykowej siatki z reklamą jogurtu „Danone-Kids" butelkę wódki.
— Smirnowka.
—Rekomendujesz? — spytałem ze zwątpieniem. Nie uważam się za specjalistę od wódek.
—Już ją dwieście lat piję. A przedtem była znacznie gorsza, możesz mi wierzyć.
Zaraz pojawiły się dwie szklanki z rżniętego szkła, dwulitrowy słoik, gdzie pod zaklepaną metalową pokrywką znajdowały się ściśnięte maleńkie ogóreczki, duża torba z kiszoną kapustą.
—A popitka? — spytałem.
—Wódki się nie popija, chłopcze — pokiwał głową Siemion. — Popija się podróbki.”
“He enjoyed life for its own sake, not for material possessions. Life was the exact opposite of money, which in itself meant nothing.”
“How many of you there still are, girls and boys of various ages, raised by naïve parents in the sixties. How many of you there are, so unhappy, not knowing how to be happy. How I long to take pity on you, how I long to help you. To touch you through the Twilight—gently, with no force at all. To give you just a little confidence in yourself, just a tiny bit of optimism, a gram of willpower, a crumb of irony. To help you, so that you could help others.”
“It's about waking up in the morning with everything around you looking gray. Gray sky, gray sun, gray city, gray people, gray thoughts. And the only way out is to have another drink. Then you feel better. Then the colors come back.”
“what good did these visits do? My mother wasn’t cured by them but Poppa continued to insist I make appearances because that was the only thing he cared about: appearances. We could both die and his prime concern would probably be burying us with the right makeup. He was burying me right now. And these psychiatrists and nurses were no better than Poppa. They kept up their sick smiles and, instead of looking for a real solution, just kept stuffing her with drugs that never worked.”
“It was strange to see that no matter what color the clothing first appeared—and they were all hues, from earthy copper and garnet to the blue of sky and shadow—in different light all turned to some shade of green, as if there were a third plane to the cloth’s weaving beyond the warp and weft.”
“There's a long-standing debate in the media biz over whether the news outlets should give the public what it wants, or what it needs. This debate presupposes that media execs actually know what it wants or needs. And that there actually is a unitary "public.”
“To go down and up two hands-and-knee climbing ravines and then out into the moonlight and the long, too-steep shoulder of mountain that you climbed one foot up to the other, one foot after the other, one stride at a time, leaning forward against the grade and the altitude, dead tired and gun weary, single file in the moonlight across the slope, on up and to the top where it was easy, the country spread in the moonlight, then up and down and on, through the small hills, tired but now in sight of the fires and”
“Creation offers proof (for those willing to accept it) of a powerful “Someone” behind the natural world. The astronomical odds against this world happening merely by chance provide insurmountable evidence for a Creator. The intricate beauty and complex design of the creation—from subatomic particles and the molecular building blocks of life to galaxies and the expanses of the universe—demonstrate that a “Designer” planned it all.”
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