Valentin Rasputin > Quotes

“الرب أعطى النقود، والشيطان صنع ثقباً. وها هي نقود الرب تتسرب عبر ثقب الشيطان.”
― Valentin Rasputin, المهلة الأخيرة

“هم يضحكون: الكبير(العجوز) مثل الصغير، ويقصدون بذلك أن أحدهما فقد عقله، أما الثاني لم يمتلكه بعد. هذا صحيح، الكبير والصغير هما فقط القادران بحساسية وحدة أن يُدهَشا لوجودهما، ولكل ما يحيط بهما في كل خطوة.”
― Valentin Rasputin, المهلة الأخيرة

“Believe them and they'll tell you all sorts of things.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“You're afraid of people's judgment…What do you care! People are like dogs; whenever anyone makes a wrong move they set up a holler. They bark and then they stop--and wait for someone else to go wrong.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“Everything, that she was saying, now, everything that she saw and heard, took place in a deep numbness, in which all the senses are stilled and a person exists not in one's own life but with some emergency life that is stuck onto one. In such situations fear, pain, surprise and enlightenment come later, and until such time as one comes to one's senses, this sober, sturdy, and almost unfeeling mechanism takes over.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“How many people, healthy and strong do not distinguish their own, personal, God-given feelings from the common, dime-a-dozen feelings. Those people get into bed with the same unbridled pleasure, ready for anything, that they sit at a table with: just to be satisfied. And they cry and laugh looking around--to make sure that they are seen laughing and crying so that their tears do not go to waste. They were played out: touch them a special way--and they won't understand, they won't respond, not a single string will vibrate with a sensitive quiver. It's too late for them--they are deaf and dumb, and they will never touch anyone that way either. And all because they did not want or did not know how to be alone with themselves, they had forgotten and lost themselves, and now they couldn't remember or find themselves.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“Let them, let them scratch where it itches, it's a real human itch to gossip, to go over someone's bones until they're picked clean. They can't live without it. And you just keep quiet, do your work, and don't taunt them--they'll stop sooner. And then it'll be someone else's turn, and you'll be with the others again. Is this the first time? The very thing they blame you for, they'll praise you for later. People…”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“قل للأحمق أن يصلي,فسيحطم رأسه من كثرة السجود.”
― Valentin Rasputin, المهلة الأخيرة

“What was so wrong with us? We were young, healthy, matched in every way. Live and be happy. No, I had to show my strength, be moody. What a fool. And I didn't understand that I was a fool; after all, I do have some brains, but I couldn't stop myself.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“...sometime when your life is so good, you'll want to make your happiness as simple as possible.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“I don't know how it is in mathematics, but in life the best proof for something lies in its opposite.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Siberia on Fire: Stories and Essays

“Let others do as they wished, but she would live the life she began and would not run from corner to corner in a frenzy. She would wait for her own happiness, not someone else's.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“Believe them and they'll you all sorts of things.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“It's still not tea without a samovar. Just water, that's all.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Farewell to Matyora

“Perhaps the most important thing in life is for each person to stay headed in the right direction within his assigned place and not to veer off in vain or run around in circles on ill-defined quests.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Siberia on Fire: Stories and Essays

“She had to live a long and wretched life to admit to herself at its end that she hadn't understood anything about it.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Farewell to Matyora

“Of course, drinking is an art, like lots of other things.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Money for Maria and Borrowed time: Two village tales

“If you're being swept away, off somewhere, then why count the pebbles on the shore; they're on the shore, after all.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Farewell to Matyora

“Lately, Nastoyna felt that she had no right to criticize anyone at all -- no man, no animal, no bird, because each lived his own life, which was not in his control and which he could not change.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“In the olden days, at least, they knew when to stop. "
"Now they don't any more. In the olden days they had some shame as well."
"Yes, now they ain't got no shame either.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Money for Maria and Borrowed time: Two village tales

“In the old days, you could see it: whether a person had it or not. Those who had it were conscientious, those without it were conscienceless. And now only the devil can tell, everything is mixed up in one pile. They bring it up needlessly with every word, mauling the poor thing so much it's barely alive.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Farewell to Matyora

“As the soil was renewed, so one's feelings seemed to change, uniting in some inexplicable way with a distant age when the eyes and ears of men were more alert to sights, sounds, and fine distinctions.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Money for Maria and Borrowed time: Two village tales

“Isn't it odd? Why do we always feel just as guilty when we think of our teachers as when we think of our parents? And not because of anything that happened at school -- no, not at all. It's because of what became of us later.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Siberia on Fire: Stories and Essays

“The world is going to crack in half: that's what is happening! And it will break across us, the old people...we don't belong here or there. Lord have mercy!”
― Valentin Rasputin, Farewell to Matyora

“It's a fact that even death looks good in company.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Farewell to Matyora

“Come on, girls. Either he's crazy, or he's telling the truth.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Farewell to Matyora

“Oh don't torture my heart! I'll die of sadness in one week there. Living among strangers! How can you transplant an old tree?”
― Valentin Rasputin, Farewell to Matyora

“You must remember everything. Everything must be remembered, but the bad, like private parts, shouldn't be shown without a good reason.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“In the old days conscience was very important. If someone tried living without one, it was obvious right away, everyone lived an open life then. There were all kinds of people then, too. Some would have been happy to follow their conscience, but what do you do if you're born without one? You can't buy it with money.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Farewell to Matyora

“Take everything that's yours with you, don't save any -- it won't be needed later.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember