Quotes from Mikhail Bulgakov

Who is official and who is unofficial these days? It all depends on your point of view. It's all so vague and changeable, Nikanor Ivanovich. Today I'm unofficial, tomorrow, hey presto! I'm official! Or maybe vice-versa – who knows?

Mihaile Aleksandrovi?u - tiho se obratio Woland galvi i tada su se kapci ubijenoga podigli i na mrtvom licu Margarita je, zadrhtavši, ugledala žive o?i ispunjene mislima i patnjom. - Sve se ispunilo, nije li istina ? - nastavio je Woland gledaju?i glavi u o?i. - Glavu vam je odrezala žena, sjednica nije održana i ja stanujem u vašem stanu. To je - ?injenica. A ?injenice su najtvrdoglavije stvari na svijetu.

This second one, evidently a lefty, socked the administrator on the other ear. In response there was another roll of thunder in the sky, and rain poured down on the wooden roof of the toilet.

Pa što, zamišljeno je rekao taj,ljudi kao ljudi. Vole novac, ali tako je uvijek bilo...?ovje?anstvo voli novac, ma od ?ega on bio napravljen, od kože, od papira, od bakra ili zlata.

Understand that the tongue can conceal the truth, but the eyes—never!

During abstinence, I'm frightened of rustling noises, people are hateful to me. I'm afraid of them. During the euphoria I love them all, but I prefer solitude.

The coal-black gloom of the darkest night had descended on the terraces of the most beautiful spot on earth, St Vladimir's Hill, whose brick-paved paths and avenues were hidden beneath a thick layer of virgin snow.

The night flowed on. During its second half the whole arc of the sky, the curtain that God had drawn across the world, was covered with stars.

My speeches in no way resemble verbal muck, as you have been pleased to put it in the presence of a lady, but rather a sequence of tightly packed syllogisms, the merit of which would be appreciated by such connoisseurs as Sextus Empiricus, Martianus Capella,4 and, for all I know, Aristotle himself.

The snow would just melt, the green Ukrainian grass would grow again and weave its carpet over the earth . . . The gorgeous sunrises would come again . . . The air would shimmer with heat above the fields and no more traces of blood would remain. Blood is cheap on those red fields and no one would redeem it.

Everything was in a mess in the Oblonskys

sterlet in a silvery chafing dish, sterlet slices interlaid with crayfish tails and fresh caviar? And eggs en cocotte with mushroom purée in little dishes? And how did you like the fillets of thrush? With truffles? Quail à la génoise?

Behind the Blue Division, the frost-bitten horses of Kozyr-Leshko's cavalry regiment crossed the bridge at a wolfish lope followed by a rumbling, bouncing field-kitchen . . . then it all disappeared as if it had never been. All that remained was the stiffening corpse of a Jew on the approach to the bridge, some trampled hay and horse-dung.

Da, ?ovjek je smrtan, ali to bi bilo tek pola nevolje. Zlo je u tome što je nejgova smrt katkada posve iznenadna, eto u ?emu je trik! I op?enito, on ne može re?i ?ak ni što ?e raditi danas nave?er.

The right place to live is behind cream-coloured blinds.

I must give due praise to the man who first extracted morphine from poppyheads. He was a true benefactor of mankind. The pain stopped seven minutes after the injection. Interesting: the pain passed over me in ceaseless waves, so that I had to gasp for breath, as though a red-hot crowbar were being thrust into my stomach and rotated. Four minutes after the injection I was able to distinguish the wave-like nature of the pain.

A man only has to be chased with firearms for him to turn into a cunning wolf: in place of his weak, and in really desperate situations useless intellect, the wisdom of animal instinct will suddenly take over.

They worked in a hurry, for as every decent man who has taken part in a revolution knows very well - no matter who is in power - searches take place from 2.30 a.m. to 6.15 a.m. in winter and from midnight to 4 a.m. in summer.

What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by living things and people.

The sentries marched back and forth, guarding their tower, for without knowing it, man had made towers, alarm-bells and weapons for one purpose only - to guard the peace of his hearth and home. For this he goes to war, which if the truth be known, is the only cause for which anyone ought to fight.

and then in the twenty-first year it suddenly transpires that Roman law is a complete waste of time, that he not only doesn't understand it and dislikes it too, but that he is really a born gardener and has an unquenchable love of flowers. This is presumably the result of some imperfection in our social system, which seems to ensure that people frequently only find their proper metier towards the end of their lives.

All of this happened very quickly, but not suddenly, and not before the appearance of certain omens.

But there were other victims as well, even after Woland left the capital, and these victims, sadly enough, were black cats.

The thought that there is no greater misfortune in the world than the loss of reason?