Sergei Lukyanenko > Quotes

“Love is happiness, but only when you believe it will last forever. Even though every time it turns out to be a lie, it’s only faith that gives love its strength and its joy.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch

“The common good and the individual good rarely coincide.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch

“Of course we got drunk!" Semyon said. "It's okay to get drunk, Anton. If you need to real bad. Only you have to get drunk on vodka. Cognac and wine—that's all for the heart."

"So what's vodka for?"

"For the soul. If it's hurting real bad”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch

“An introverted, bookish child, with a mass of complexes and her head full of crazy ideals and a childish faith in the beautiful prince who was searching for and would surely find her.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch

“If age teaches you anything, then one of its lessons is certainly not to hurry if you're already late....”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Day Watch

“The hardest thing of all is when pain is hidden behind a mask of calm.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch

“If you have love in you, it's a strength. But if you are in love, it's a weakness.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Day Watch

“That's the hardest thing of all--never to become cynical, never to lose faith, never to become indifferent.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Twilight Watch

“Many years ago someone told me something that I flatly refused to accept. And I still don't accept it now, despite all the times I've seen it proved right.
"The common good and the individual good rarely coincide..."
Sure, I know, it's true.
But some truths are probably worse than lies.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch

“One day you will hear the sound of time rustling as it slips through your fingers like sand. Remember me then. I wish you luck.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch

“We are our own gods and our own demons”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Twilight Watch

“Why was is that the Light acted through lies, and the Darkness acted though the truth? Why was is that our truth proved powerless, but lies were effective? And why was the Darkness able to manage perfectly well with truth in order to do Evil?”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch

“There are far more reasons for death than there are for life.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, The Last Watch

“I believe it, she's a very good person, kind. There's weariness there, but no bitterness or spite. When you're with a girl like that you feel like a different person. You try to be better, and that's a strain. Men prefer to be friends with her kind, flirt a bit, share confidences. They don't often fall in love with girls like that, but everybody loves them.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch

“A car's not the right place for showing off to a girl—the bed's the place for that. The consequences of a mistake there are more upsetting, but less tragic.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, The Last Watch

“An assassin can be found for every president. And for every prophet there are a thousand interpreters to distort the essence of the religion, to replace the bright flame with the heat of the inquisitors' pyres. The time came when every book was cast into the fire, when every symphony was reduced to a popular tune and played in all the drinking dens. A sound philosophical basis could be set in place under any vile nonsense.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch

“You're a Dark One," said Anton. "All you see in everything is evil, treachery, trickery."

"All I do is not close my eyes to them," Edgar retorted. "And that's why I don't trust Zabulon. I distrust him almost as much as I do Gesar. I can even trust you more—you're just another unfortunate chess piece who happens by chance to be painted a different color from me. Does a white pawn hate a black one? No. Especially if the two pawns have their heads down together over a quiet beer or two."

"You know," Anton said in a slightly surprised voice, "I just don't understand how you can carry on living if you see the world like that. I'd just go and hang myself."

"So you don't have any counterarguments to offer?"

Anton took a gulp of beer too. The wonderful thing about this natural Czech beer was that even if you drank lots of it, it still didn't make your head or your body feel heavy... Or was that an illusion?

"Not a single one," Anton admitted. "Right now, this very moment, not a single one. But I'm sure you're wrong. It's just difficult to argue about the colors of the rainbow with a blind man. There's something missing in you... I don't know what exactly. But it's something very important, and without it you're more helpless than a blind man.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Day Watch

“Forgiving was the hardest thing. Sometimes forgiving was the hardest thing in the whole world.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, The Last Watch

“What was my truth worth, if I was prepared to defend the entire world, but not those who were close to me? If I subdued hate, but wouldn't give love a chance?”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch

“How wonderful it would be if everything could always be as clear and simple as it used to be when you were twelve years old, or twenty years old. If there really were only two colors in the world: black and white. But even the most honest and ingenuous cop, raised on the resounding ideal of the stars and stripes, has to understand sooner or later that there's more than just Darkness and Light out on the streets. There are understandings, concessions, agreements. Informers, traps, provocations. Sooner or later the time comes when you have to betray your own side, plant bags of heroin in pockets, and beat people on the kidneys—carefully, so there are no marks.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch

“After all, inside every woman, no matter how grown up she is, there is still a frightened little girl.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, The Last Watch

“In a war the most dangerous thing is to understand the enemy. To understand is to forgive.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch

“What an unfortunate instrument the guitar is! An instrument of such great nobility, a genuine monarch of music-- reduced to a pitiful lump of wood with six strings, constantly abused by people with no ear and no voice.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Day Watch

“There is no abstract Evil; you have to understand that! Its roots are here, all around us, in this herd that goes on chewing and having a good time only an hour after a murder! That's what you have to fight for. For people. Evil is a hydra with many heads, and the more of them you cut off, the more it grows! Hydras have to be starved to death, do you understand that? Kill a hundred Dark Ones, and a thousand more will take their place.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Night Watch

“Czech beer in bottles is the corpse of real beer in a glass coffin.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Day Watch

“That's the way it goes sometimes: in order to help your friends, first you have to help your enemy. Better get used to it.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Day Watch

“When people got old, why did they always develop a passion for scrabbling in the earth? Were they trying to get used to it?”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Twilight Watch

“Haggis" is a brand of nappies.' I said. 'They're good, we used them for our daughter.'
'Haggis is a kind of food too,' said Semyon, shaking his head. 'Although as far as taste goes, there's probably not much difference.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, The Last Watch

“And the simple people are trash. A herd of sheep that are good for shearing, but sometimes it's more profitable to slaughter them.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, Day Watch

“When there are strange things going on all around, every coincidence should be considered very carefully.”
― Sergei Lukyanenko, New Watch