The Eighth Life

And if you don’t know who you are, then look at all the possible versions of you, find the most impossible one, and become that.

She had learned that words are not always promises, that music cannot save you, that your own abilities do not always lead to their predestined objective, that love is sometimes just camouflage for something much worse; she had learned to tame her dreams, had learned to paint over her disappointments with a dash of lipstick;

We decide what we want to remember and what we don’t. Time has nothing to do with it. Time doesn’t care.

People were afraid of memories, of insights, knowing these might drag them into a bottomless pit, twist their own lives out of all recognition, and all of this could cause self-loathing to swell to immeasurable proportions. Besides, where was all this wretched truth-telling heading?

Love was slow, creeping poison, loge was treacherous and insincere, love was a veil thrown over the misery of the world, love was sticky and indigestible, it was a mirror in which one could be what one was not, it was a spectre that spread hope where hope had long since dies, it was a hiding place where people thought they found refuge and ultimately found only themselves, it was a vague memory of another love, it was the possibility of a salvation that was ultimately equivalent to a coup de grace, it was a war without victors, it was a precious jewel amid broken fragments you cut yourself on: yes, Brilka, in those days that was love.

Of course, we were too young for reality that night. Of course, dreams tasted better than the past and the future. Of course, hope was more attractive than the present. Of course, we were infatuated with each other and with revelling in our idea of love. Of course, we were the first and last lovers on the planet. Of course, the threat that hung in the air was a mere trifle compared to the turmoil we felt inside. Of course, that night we were wiser and more cunning than life itself.

and you asked me where people keep their childhood, and I remember telling you that we keep it hidden, between our ribs, in little liver spots and moles, in the roots of our hair, above our heart, in our ears or our laugh.

In Germany you cannot have a revolution because you would have to step on the lawns. VLADIMIR LENIN

But you can’t do everything at once. Having everything is like having nothing,

Ze dacht aan Peter Vasiljev en aan de geesten van niet-geleefde dromen, die gedoemd zijn een mens te blijven achtervolgen. Ze zag zichzelf nog een laatste keer in het Théâtre du Châtelet over het toneel zwieren, gewild, geliefd, bejubeld, en sloot het glimlachend in haar hart, dat verloren andere leven, vol vrijheid, ongebreidelde hartstochten en provocaties, in de kring van uitverkorenen en voortreffelijken - ten slotte dwong ze zichzelf toch op te staan, omdat Kitty en Kostja alweer ruziemaakten en Christine hen niet tot de rede wist te brengen.

I am duty bound to her. I am duty bound to her chaos. I have always been duty bound to seek my heaven in her chaos.

Didn't one have to be born twice - three, four, countless times, even - in order to do justice to one's desires?

Searching for yourself and at the same time refusing to become yourself, for fear that you wouldn't be able to shake off all the ghosts that pursue us.

What an effort it cost to absent yourself from the world.

Perhaps his discipline, his longing for power, was nothing more than a constant effort to annihilate this fear. The fear of mistakes, the fear that everything around him might one day turn out to be meaningless.

Someone who needs a veil, an object, even one made of silk, between themselves and the world is afraid of life. They’re afraid to experience things, to really feel them. And I think life is far too short and far too wonderful not to really look at it, not to really grab it, not to really live it.

Dante is walking through Purgatory. Criminals and violent men are burning in agony on a mighty bonfire; some are drowning in a sea of blood. In the distance, Dante sees a man who is only up to his knees in blood. He approaches, recognises Lavrenti Beria, and asks him: ‘Why is it so shallow where you are, Lavrenti?’ And Beria replies with a malicious grin: ‘I’m standing on the shoulders of Joseph Stalin, sir!

Creating the idea of an enemy for oneself releases a destructive power. Because it is not the enemy who creates mistrust, but mistrust that creates the enemy. MERAB MAMARDASHVILI

It was too long since each had discarded his own will, his own opinion, even his own feelings; now they sat like marionettes abandoned by their puppeteer.

The post-war world fell into a frenzy. People wanted to celebrate life and clear away the rubble; they wanted to dance heathen dances of survival, they wanted to drink, they wanted to celebrate, they wanted to gorge themselves on all the things they had lacked in recent years. People wanted shallow operettas, they wanted risqué songs, they wanted nice, sentimental films with rural settings. They wanted to forget; they wanted to live as if there were no tomorrow — and no yesterday.

That autumn, people started to clean up the mess in the world and enlarge the cemeteries in the cities.

and before she burst into the kitchen she spent a few seconds practising her old, unbridled laugh, trying to remember what her voice had sounded like when she had been happy.

Memories make the heart soft and transparent. You can’t shoot well with a transparent heart, Brilka: you miss your target, and soon become a target yourself.

In August of that year, the Generalissimus issued order number 270, according to which any soldier who allowed himself to be taken as a prisoner of war was to be considered a traitor. Red Army soldiers had only two options: to let themselves be shot by the Germans, or be shot later by their own people.

What Hitler didn’t know was that the terror and misery the Wehrmacht planned to bring with its invasion were already part of everyday life in the USSR. That the Soviet horror of recent years had prepared the people all too well for the horror Hitler planned to inflict on their country.