Quotes from Vasily Grossman

There was a cold wind out on the street. It picked up the dust, whirled it about and suddenly scattered it, flinging it down like black chaff. There was an implacable severity in the frost, in the branches that tapped together like bones, in the icy blue of the tram-lines.

The Russian earth is indeed fertile and generous. She gives birth to her own Platos, to her own quick-witted Newtons—but how casually and terribly she devours these children of hers.

Shargorodsky was a very gentle man, and quite helpless in any practical matter. He was the sort of man about whom people say, 'He's got the soul of a child,' or 'He's as kind as an angel.' And yet he could walk straight past a hungry child or a ragged old woman begging for crusts, feeling quite indifferent, still muttering his favourite lines of poetry.

In the blank wall of the world's indifference there had appeared a tiny snakelike fissure

The country had seen mighty tractors and skyscrapers...There was only one thing Russia had not seen during this thousand years: freedom.

Her grief was the same grief that breathed on this deck, a grief that had always known the way from the military hospitals and graves of the front back to the huts of peasants, huts without numbers standing on patches of waste ground without a name.

There are one or two people - I'm not talking about family, about Zhenya or your mother - whom a pariah can trust. He can contact these people without first waiting for a sign.

What constitutes the freedom, the soul of an individual life, is its uniqueness. The reflection of the universe in someone's consciousness is the foundation of his or her power, but life only becomes happiness, is only endowed with freedom and meaning when someone exists as a whole world that has never been repeated in all eternity. Only then can they experience the joy of freedom and kindness, finding in others what they have already found in themselves.

Todo lo que vive es irrepetible. Es inconcebible que dos seres humanos, dos arbustos de rosa silvestre sean idénticos... La vida se extingue allí donde existe el empeño de borrar las diferencias y las particularidades por medio de la violencia.

If everyone had two little apple trees like this, I believe there'd be no need for wars. Fascism would be impotent. These knobbly little branches are like honest arms and hands. They could save the world from war, savagery and disaster.

Allí donde no hay libertad humana no puede haber libertad nacional, ya que la libertad nacional es sobre todo libertad del hombre.

Che potenza! Lo Stato contro l'uomo... Ora ti porta alle stelle, ora ti scaraventa in fondo a un burrone come se niente fosse».

For a moment she felt she was about to reconcile this present time, the words of the man now kissing her, with that time in the past; that she was about to understand the secret currents of her life, about to glimpse what always remains hidden – those depths of the heart where one's fate is decided.

Only the Führer has the right to think, not that he has any great love of thinking—he prefers what he calls intuition.

Several times a day Viktor passed his hand over his chest, over the jacket pocket where he kept it. Once, when the pain seemed unbearable, he thought, "If I hide it away somewhere, I might slowly start to calm down. As things are, this letter's like an open grave." But he knew that he would sooner destroy himself than part with this letter that had, by some miracle, managed to find its way to him.

No destino da gente do campo de concentração, a semelhança nascia da diferença. Fosse a visão de um passado ligado a um pomar à beira de um poeirento caminho italiano, ou ao marulho sombrio do mar do Norte, ou a um quebra-luz de papel cor de laranja em casa de um chefe local no subúrbio de Bobruisk – todos os presos sem exceção tinham um passado maravilhoso.

Os campos de concentração tornaram-se cidades da Nova Europa. Cresciam e alargavam-se, com o seu traçado próprio, com as suas ruelas e praças, os seus hospitais, com as suas feiras da ladra, os seus crematórios e estádios.

And there had even been room in his head for the rustling of leaves, the light of the moon, millet porridge with milk, the sound of flames in the stove, snatches of tunes, the barking of dogs, the Roman Senate, Soviet Information Bureau bulletins, a hatred of slavery, and a love of melon seeds.

love being like a lump of coal: hot, it burns you; cold, it makes you dirty.

Cuando el sentimiento de melancolía bovina, de irremediable fatalismo se transforma en un lacerante sentido del horror, el absurdo opio del optimismo acude en ayuda de los hombres.

Karasik, Natasja – verlegen

The intuition of a deafened and isolated soldier often turns out to be nearer the truth than judgements delivered by staff officers as they study the map.

What constitutes the freedom, the soul of an individual life, is its uniqueness. The reflection of the universe in someone's consciousness is the foundation of his or her power, but life only becomes happiness, is only endowed with freedom and meaning when someone exists as a whole world that has never been repeated in all eternity. Only then can they experience the joy of freedom and kindness, finding in others what they have already found in themselves.

When we look one another in the face, we're neither of us just looking at a face we hate - no, we're gazing into a mirror... Do you really not recognize yourselves into us...? (In The Testaments, Margaret Atwood)