Quotes from Varlam Shalamov

The agnosticism I had upheld throughout my conscious life had not made me a Christian. But in the camps I had not seen better people than the believers. Depravity affected everyone's souls; only the believers held out.

Well, I've been here since thirty-eight. I was at Elgen first. I did thirty childbirths there; before Elgen I hadn't done any. Then came the war. My husband died in Kiev. So did my two children. Boys. A bomb. More people have died around me than in any battle in war. They died when there was no war, before there was a war. All the same. Grief is like happiness: it comes in all forms.

Major Pugachiov didn't believe Vlasov's officers until he himself reached the Red Army units. Everything Vlasov's men had said was true. The state didn't want him, the state was afraid of him.

wasn't going to try and get the foreman's job, even though it gave you a chance of staying alive, for the worst thing in the camps was forcing another person, a prisoner like yourself, to bow to your will (or anyone else's). What did it matter that I knew that Ivanov was a swine, that Petrov was a spy and Zaslavsky a false witness?

It was difficult for me to write, and not just because my hands were rough and my fingers so permanently bent around the handle of a pick and axe that unbending them was unbelievably difficult. I managed to wrap a thick rag around pen and pencil to give them the thickness of a pick or shovel handle.

Les livres sont ce que nous avons de meilleur en cette vie, ils sont notre immortalité.

Essere un rivoluzionario significa prima di tutto essere una persona onestà. Di per sé una cosa semplice, eppure così difficile.

Con l'arresto," mi dicevano i professionisti del carcere "sopraggiunge una sorta di sollievo morale; invece dell'inquietudine, dell'ansia, della tensione, si avverte una gioia segreta, in un certo senso tutto si è definito, sta facendo il suo corso... E sebbene ti si prospettino la condanna e la deportazione in carcere l'anima finalmente si riposa, ci si fa coraggio e si fa coraggio agli altri, se ne hanno bisogno