Victor Shklovsky > Quotes

“You have to store up books, becoming acquainted with human experience; let them lie around your thoughts, becoming yours—ring upon ring, as a tree grows, let them rise up from the depths like coral islands.

If it gets crowded with all the books and there's nowhere to put your bed, it's better to exchange it for a folding bed”
― Viktor Shklovsky

“And art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony.”
― Viktor Shklovsky, Art as Technique

“Art makes the familiar strange so that it can be freshly perceived. To do this it presents its material in unexpected, even outlandish ways: the shock of the new.”
― Viktor Shklovsky

“Habitualization devours objects, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war. If all the complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been.

Art exists to help us recover the sensation of life; it exists to make us feel things, to make the stone stony. The end of art is to give a sensation of the object seen, not as recognized. The technique of art is to make things 'unfamiliar,' to make forms obscure, so as to increase the difficulty and the duration of perception. The act of perception in art is an end in itself and must be prolonged. In art, it is our experience of the process of construction that counts, not the finished product.”
― Victor Shklovsky

“Misfortune of this kind comes to many. Life is well ordered, like a nécessaire, but not all of us can find our places in it. Life tailors us for a certain person and laughs when we are drawn to someone unable to love us.
All this is simple--like postage stamps.”
― Viktor Shklovsky, Zoo or Letters Not About Love

“She is the only island for you in your life. From her there is no turning back for you. Only around her does the sea have color.”
― Victor Shklovsky, Zoo or Letters Not About Love

“Of all the contradictions, the most painful to me is that while the lips in question are busy renewing themselves, the heart is being worn to frazzle; and with it go the forgotten things, undetected.”
― Victor Shklovsky, Zoo or Letters Not About Love

“Хожу в осеннем пальто, а если бы настал мороз, то пришлось бы называть это пальто зимним.”
― Viktor Shklovsky, Zoo or Letters Not About Love

“Life is well ordered, like a 'nécessaire', but not all of us can find our places in it.”
― Victor Shklovsky, Zoo or Letters Not About Love

“In Moscow, city of pedestrians, it was the engine that drove a driver to crime. A weapon makes a man bolder. A horse turns him into a calvryman. Things make of a man whatever he makes from them. Speed requires a goal.
Things are multiplying around us--there are ten or even a hundred times more of them now than there were two hundred years ago. Mankind has them under control, but the individual does not.”
― Victor Shklovsky, Zoo or Letters Not About Love

“If we start to examine the general laws of perception, we see that as perception becomes habitual, it becomes automatic. Thus, for example, all of our habits retreat into the area of the unconscious automatic…[Art] exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things, to make the stone stony. The purpose of art is to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as they are known. The technique of art is to make an object "unfamiliar," to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged. Art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object; the object is not important.”
― Viktor Shklovsky

“Сперва меня клонило к тебе, как клонит сон в вагоне голову пассажира на плечо соседа. Потом я загляделся на тебя. Знаю твой рот, твои губы. Я намотал на мысль о тебе всю свою жизнь. Я верю, что ты не чужой человек, - ну посмотри в мою сторону. Я напугал тебя своею любовью; когда, вначале, я был еще весел, я больше тебе нравился. Это от России, дорогая. У нас тяжелая походка. Но в России я был крепок , а здесь начал плакать.”
― Viktor Shklovsky, Zoo or Letters Not About Love

“Sick birds don’t like to be watched.”
― Victor Shklovsky, Zoo or Letters Not About Love

“He had begun to weep in Prague not out of sentimentality, but the way windows weep in a room heated for the first time in many weeks.”
― Victor Shklovsky, Zoo or Letters Not About Love

“мир запыляется, и мы перестаем его ощущать. Стекло жизни запыляется, и человек живет тускло, а литература, писатель с сюжетом протирает это стекло и делает её опять осознаваемой, яркой, ощущаемой”
― Viktor Shklovsky

“Он в картинах не европеец, а витебец. Марк Шагал не принадлежит к "культурному миру". ... Так вот, витебские мальчишки все рисуют, как Шагал, и это ему в похвалу, он сумел быть в Париже и Питере витебцем.”
― Victor Shklovsky, Zoo or Letters Not About Love

“Așa trece viața, prefăcându-se în nimic. Automatismul ca fenomen înghite lucrurile, hainele, mobilele, nevasta și teama de război.”
― Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky

“No one can insult us, because we work. No one can make us ridiculous, because we know our value.”
― Victor Shklovsky, Zoo or Letters Not About Love

“A drunken soldier sobers up on his horse, but a lonely man is drunk beyond repair.”
― Victor Shklovsky, Zoo or Letters Not About Love

“Așa trece viața, prefăcându-se în nimic. Automatismul ca fenomen înghite lucrurile, hainele, mobilele, nevasta și teama de război

(V.B Șklovski, Arta ca procedeu, 1925, în Mihai Pop, coord., Ce este literatura? Școala formală rusă, p. 386)”
― Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky

“Apropo de digresiuni. La Fielding, în Joseph Andrews, există un capitol, introdus după o descriere de încăierare. Capitolul cuprinde relatarea discuției dintre scriitor și actor și poartă următorul titlu: Introdus anume pentru a frâna acțiunea".

(V. B. Șklovski, Literatura fără subiect, în Mihai Pop, coord., Ce este literatura? Școala formală rusă, p. 447)”
― Viktor Borisovich Shklovsky