Quotes from Jerzy Kosi?ski

The Party was to the working people what the engine is to a train. It led others toward the best goals, it pointed out shortcuts to an improvement of their lives. And Stalin was the engineer at the throttle of this engine.

He's a fine man, with a sense of justice nicely contained by the law and an excellent judgment of both the pulse and purse of the electorate.

The strength of the Party, as Gavrila explained, lay in its ability to rid itself of those who, like a jammed or crooked wheel on a cart, impeded progress. This self-purging was done at the meetings. It was there that members acquired the necessary toughness.

It seemed that to reach the pinnacle a man must climb simultaneously many ladders. He might have been already halfway up on the professional ladder while just starting out on the political one. He might have been ascending one and descending the other.

Gavrila's teaching, not to lose a single word. He maintained that to be happy and useful one should join the march of the working people, keeping in step with the others in the place assigned in the column.

One time we attended a child with a rotting leg, covered with wrinkled brown skin, from which a bloody yellow pus oozed. The stench from the leg was so strong that even Olga had to open the door every few moments and let in a draft of fresh air. All day long I stared at the gangrenous leg while the child alternately sobbed and fell asleep.

The church always overwhelmed me. And yet it was one of the many houses of God scattered all over the world. God did not live in any of them, but it was assumed for some reason that He was present in all of them at once. He was like the unexpected guest for whom the wealthier farmers always kept an additional place at their table.

Man carries in himself his own private war, which he has to wage, win or lose

I learned that the order of the world had nothing to do with God, and that God had nothing to do with the world. The reason for this was quite simple. God did not exist. The cunning priests had invented Him so they could trick stupid, superstitious people.

In addition, he had a rare first edition of Krylov's Fables, with Krylov's own notes handwritten on many of the pages, inserted into Gardiner's package. The volume had been requisitioned from the private collection of a recently arrested Jewish member of the Academy of Sciences in Leningrad.

Fire, they said, is no natural friend to man. That is why one must humor it.

I write when I feel like it, and I feel like it most of the time.

man-made lightning

Brother fought against brother, fathers swung axes against sons in front of their mothers. An invisible force divided people, split families, addled brains. Only the elders remained sane, scurrying from one side to the other, begging the combatants to make peace. They cried in their squeaky voices that there was enough war in the world without starting one in the village.

I was wondering why, if God could make sinners into pillars of salt so easily, salt was so expensive. And why didn't He turn some sinners into meat or sugar? The villagers certainly needed these as much as salt.

From God's point of view it seemed to make more sense if everyone lost the war, since everyone was committing murder.

We welcome the inevitable seasons of nature, yet we are upset by the seasons of our economy! How

Chance waited patiently until she stopped.

What were parents for if not to be with their children in times of danger?

But hatreds of large groups of people must have been the most valuable of all. I could barely imagine the prize earned by the person who managed to inculcate in all blond, blue-eyed people a long-lasting hatred of dark ones.

Chance became only an image for millions of real people. They would never know how real he was, since his thinking could not be televised. And to him, the viewers existed only as projections of his own thought, as images. He would never know how real they were, since he had never met them and did not know what they thought.

The trees stood stiffly like sinister monks in black habits guarding the glades and clearings with the broad sleeves of their branches.

A gardener! Isn't that the perfect description of what a real businessman is?

Many of us forget that nature and society are one! Yes, though we have tried to cut ourselves off from nature, we are still part of it. Like nature, our economic system remains, in the long run, stable and rational, and that's why we must not fear to be at its mercy.