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Russian Quotes

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Russian Quotes

“For those of you that truly believe there's no such thing as the mafiya, I would be more than happy to sell you your own fast lane on the Belt Parkway, you know, so you can avoid the rush hour commute. The mafiya is real as a heart attack and, contrary to popular consensus, has been steadily growing in power since its inception in the 1920s. Italian organized crime just doesn't operate out in the open anymore, former mayor Rudy made sure of that.”

“I've played Romeo for Juliet (But in depth) It's vignettes of silhouettes (And then read) And watched Russian roulette, yeah red Soviet Yet doing it simultaneously While dropping down shed oubliettes Turned around and took truth to the head that Love is the ugliest thing too beautiful for death”

“I revealed my affection towards my former employer and felt sick at myself for betraying him. My grandfather stood and poured me another tall glass. He offered me a sour tomato to take the edge off of the vodka. Pappy pulled his chair up next to mine then put his oversized arm around my shoulder and offered me his wisdom. "Feel no pity for this man James," he whispered. "A fool and his money are lucky to come together in the first place. More so, it's the responsibility of much smarter, more dubious men to party them," he finished.”

“Disrespect one of our associates and face the penalty | This was our creed. There should have been corpses floating that cold September eve. This was the perfect place to do it, too, in the middle of the ocean where gunfire goes unheard and chopped up limbs and torsos would be lucky to survive the predators and float onto a beach weeks or even months later.”

“After Olympia Press, in Paris, published the book, an American critic suggested that "Lolita" was the record of my love affair with the romantic novel. The substitution "English language" for "romantic novel" would make this elegant formula more correct. But here I feel my voice rising to a much too strident pitch. None of my American friends have read my Russian books and thus every appraisal on the strength of my English ones is bound to be out of focus. My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English, devoid of any of those apparatuses -- the baffling mirror, the black velvet backdrop, the implied associations and traditions -- which the native illusionist, frac-tails flying, can magically use to transcend the heritage in his own way.”

“The great Russian literature is above all a literature of pessimism, more accurately of passive pessimism.... Russian passive pessimism educated the cadre of "superfluous people," or to put it more simply, parasites, "dreamers," people "without any given responsibilities," "whimperers," "grey little people" of the "twentieth rank.".... In contemporary Russian ethnographic romanticism such an idealization of past Razins and Pugachevs fuses with a sense of Russian "imperial" patriotism and obscures dreams concerning the future. It is incapable of going beyond this. The great Russian literature has reached its limit and has halted at the crossroads.... And the illiterate advice to found our orientation upon Muscovite art sounds like a malicious irony directed at the same Russian literature. By the will of history entirely the opposite will come to pass: Russian literature can only find the magical balm for its revival beneath the luxuriant, vital tree of the renaissance of young national republics, in the atmosphere of the springtime of once oppressed nations.”

“Уся Росія - країна якихось жадібних і лінивих людей: вони страшенно багато їдять, п'ють, люблять спати вдень й уві сні хропуть. Одружуються вони задля порядку в домі, а коханок заводять задля престижу в суспільстві. Психологія у них собача: б'ють їх - вони тихесенько поскиглюють і ховаються по своїх норах, приголублять - вони лягають на спину, лапки догори й виляють хвостиками.”

“I dream less of him, dear God be gloried, Does not shimmer everywhere any more. Fog has fallen on the whitened road, Shadows run over water to the shore. And all day the ringing did not quiet Over the expanse of ploughed up soil, Here most powerfully from Jonah Distant Laurel belltowers do recoil. I am trimming on the lilac bushes Branches, that are now in full flower; Ramparts of the ancient fortifying Two old monks are slowly walking over. Dear world, understood and corporeal, For me, one unseeing, set alive. Heal this soul of mine, the King of Heaven, With the icy comfort of not love.”

“Has my fate really been so altered, Or is this game truly truly over? Where are winters, when I fell asleep In the morning in the sixth hour? In a new way, severely and calmly, I now live on the wild shore. I can no longer pronounce The tender or idle word. I can't believe that Christmas-tide is coming. Touchingly green is this the steppe before The beaming sun. Like a warm Wave, licks the tender shore. When from happiness languid and tired I was, then of such quiet With trembling inexpressible I dreamed And this in my imagining I deemed The after-mortal wandering of the soul...”

“After learning that Sasha wouldn’t be able to take time off work to go to Russia during the winter, Jason pilfered Sasha’s sister’s number from his phone, contacting her about what they usually had for dinner on New Year’s Eve, and making it—or attempting to, anyway—as a surprise for Sasha. Jason would never forget Sasha’s face that night. Confused, at first, when he smelt the food before seeing it all laid out on Jason’s table. Pickled vegetables glinted alongside a beetroot and herring salad—if it could be called a salad, really, with the amount of mayonnaise in it. There were cut fruits and lemons, and in the middle, a mountain of pork and potatoes that could feed far more than two people. Sasha had stared, tears welling up in his eyes at once, to Jason’s repressed mortification and pleasure. Before Jason could try and downplay the gesture, Sasha had swept him up into a bear-hug so crushing and delightful that he’d genuinely not been able to breathe for a few seconds. “Best friend!” Sasha declared him at once, swinging him around and almost braining Jason on the wall.”