Quotes from Mikhail Bulgakov

Tea is not vodka, it is impossible to drink it a lot

The poet had wasted his night while others had spent it enjoying themselves and now he realised that it was lost forever. He only had to lift his head up from the lamp and look at the sky to see that the night had gone beyond return. Waiters were hurriedly jerking the cloths off the tables. The cats pacing the verandah had a morning look about them. Day broke inexorably over the poet.

I was helping the firemen, Messire," replied Korovyev, indicating his ripped trousers. "Ah, if that's the case, then of course, a new building will have to be built.

Nie popeÅ'niono ?adnego bÅ'Ä™du. W ogóle jestem nieco zaniepokojony, Afraniuszu, najwyra?niej mam do czynienia z czÅ'owiekiem, który nigdy nie popeÅ'nia bÅ'Ä™dów. CzÅ'owiekiem ów to ty.

Ekspedienci z dziaÅ'u rybnego osÅ'upieli z no?ami w dÅ'oniach, lila cudzoziemiec odwróciÅ' siÄ™ w stronÄ™ rabusiów i wtedy wyszÅ'o na jaw, ?e Behemot nie miaÅ' racji – twarzy liliowego nie tylko nie brakowaÅ'o niczego, ale raczej czegoÅ› byÅ'o w niej za du?o – za du?o obwisÅ'ych policzków i rozbieganych oczu.

Tak – mówiÅ' dalej Korowiow – zdumiewajÄ…cych rzeczy mo?na oczekiwa? z cieplarni tego domu, jednoczÄ…cego pod swoim dachem kilka tysiÄ™cy pracowitych straceÅ"ców, którzy postanowili caÅ'e swoje ?ycie poÅ›wiÄ™ci? sÅ'u?bom Melpomeny, Polihymnii i Talii.

Very well then," replied the guest, and said weightily and distinctly: "Yesterday at Patriarch's Ponds you met with Satan.

There's no need for you to intercede for him, Margarita, because the one with whom he so sought to talk has already interceded for him.

Ach, jak siÄ™ cieszÄ™! Nigdy w ?yciu tak siÄ™ nie cieszyÅ'am! Ale proszÄ™ mi wybaczy?, Azazello, ?e jestem naga. Azazello prosiÅ', ?eby siÄ™ tym nie przejmowaÅ'a, zapewniaÅ', ?e widziaÅ' nie tylko nagie kobiety, ale nawet kobiety kompletnie obdarte ze skóry(...).

No có?, ten, który kocha, powinien dzieli? los tego, kogo kocha.

Representatives of the investigation team and experienced psychiatrists established that the members of the criminal gang, or, perhaps, one of them (suspicion for this fell principally on Korovyev), were hypnotists of unprecedented power

Of course, when people have been robbed of everything, like you and me, they seek salvation from other-worldly powers!

Allow me to ask you, then, how man can govern if he cannot plan for even so ridiculously short a span as a thousand years or so, if, in fact, he cannot guarantee his own next day?

I have just been cut in half by a streetcar at Patriarch's. Funeral Friday 3PM. Come. Berlioz

Ah, so?!' Ivan said, turning around with a wild and hunted look. 'Well, then… Goodbye!' And he rushed head first into the windowblind. The crash was rather forceful, but the glass behind the blind gave no crack, and in an instant Ivan Nikolaevich was struggling in the hands of the orderlies. He gasped, tried to bite, shouted: 'So that's the sort of windows you've got here!

And to the revenge—on the hacks, the yes-men, the snitches, the hypocrites—that the novel declines to rise above.

The pantry was cool and smelled of mice and boots.

The monthly magazine Moskva, otherwise a rather cautious and quiet publication, carried the first part of The Master and Margarita in its November 1966 issue.

There isn't a single eastern religion," said Berlioz, "in which, as a rule, a chaste virgin doesn't give birth to a god. And without inventing anything new, in exactly the same way, the Christians created their Jesus, who in reality never actually lived. And it's on that the main emphasis needs to be put...

The White Guard, written in the twenties and dealing with the nearly contemporary events of the Russian civil war in his native Kiev and the Ukraine, a book which in its clear-sighted portrayal of human courage and weakness ranks among the truest depictions of war in all of literature.

One is the much-quoted 'Manuscripts don't burn', which seems to express an absolute trust in the triumph of poetry, imagination, the free word, over terror and oppression, and could thus become a watchword of the intelligentsia. The publication of The Master and Margarita was taken as a proof of the assertion.

it refused to stay burned.

Cowardice is the most terrible of vices

Bulgakov began work on the first version of the novel early in 1929, or possibly at the end of 1928.