Marina Lewycka > Quotes

“As Romeo and Juliet found to their cost, marriage is never just about two people falling in love, it is about families.”
― Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

“In my country we say that ignorance is the warm bath in which it is comfortable to sit but dangerous to lie down.”
― Marina Lewycka, We Are All Made of Glue

“A man needs enough...no less, no more. ”
― Marina Lewycka, Two Caravans

“When I saw the car pulling into the driveway and I saw her getting out and walking towards the house, can you imagine Nadezhda, I performed involuntary excretion in my trousers.”
― Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

“It’s funny, but when I talk about this business of my father and Valentina with my women friends, they’re absolutely appalled. They see a vulnerable old man who’s being exploited. Yet all the men I talk to—without any exception, Mike” (I wag my finger) “they respond with these wry knowing smiles, these little admiring chuckles. Oh, what a lad he is. What an achievement, pulling this much younger bird. Best of luck to him. Let him have his bit of fun.”
“You must admit, it’s done him good.”
“I don’t admit anything.”
(It’s much less satisfying arguing with Mike than with Vera or Pappa. He’s always so irritatingly reasonable.)
“Are you sure you’re not just being a bit puritanical?”
“Of course I’m not!” (So what if I am?) “It’s because he’s my father—I just want him to be grown up.”
“He is being grown up, in his way.”
“No he’s not, he’s being a lad. An eighty-four-year-old lad. You’re all being lads together. Wink wink. Nudge nudge. What a great pair of knockers. For goodness’ sake!” My voice has risen to a shriek.
“But you can see it’s doing him good, this new relationship. It’s breathed new life into him. Just goes to show that you’re never too old for love.”
“You mean for sex.”
“Well, maybe that as well. Your Dad is just hoping to fulfil every man’s dream—to lie in the arms of a beautiful younger woman.”
“Every man’s dream?”
That night Mike and I sleep in separate beds.”
― Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

“Ireland, like Ukraine, is a largely rural country which suffers from its proximity to a more powerful industrialised neighbour. Ireland’s contribution to the history of tractors is the genius engineer Harry Ferguson, who was born in 1884, near Belfast.
Ferguson was a clever and mischievous man, who also had a passion for aviation. It is said that he was the first man in Great Britain to build and fly his own aircraft in 1909. But he soon came to believe that improving efficiency of food production would be his unique service to mankind. Harry Ferguson’s first two-furrow plough was attached to the chassis of the Ford Model T car converted into a tractor, aptly named Eros. This plough was mounted on the rear of the tractor, and through ingenious use of balance springs it could be raised or lowered by the driver using a lever beside his seat. Ford, meanwhile, was developing its own tractors. The Ferguson design was more advanced, and made use of hydraulic linkage, but Ferguson knew that despite his engineering genius, he could not achieve his dream on his own. He needed a larger company to produce his design. So he made an informal agreement with Henry Ford, sealed only by a handshake. This Ford-Ferguson partnership gave to the world a new type of Fordson tractor far superior to any that had been known before, and the precursor of all modern-type tractors. However, this agreement by a handshake collapsed in 1947 when Henry Ford II took over the empire of his father, and started to produce a new Ford 8N tractor, using the Ferguson system. Ferguson’s open and cheerful nature was no match for the ruthless mentality of the American businessman. The matter was decided in court in 1951. Ferguson claimed $240 million, but was awarded only $9.25 million. Undaunted in spirit, Ferguson had a new idea. He approached the Standard Motor Company at Coventry with a plan, to adapt the Vanguard car for use as tractor. But this design had to be modified, because petrol was still rationed in the post-war period. The biggest challenge for Ferguson was the move from petrol-driven to diesel-driven engines and his success gave rise to the famous TE-20, of which more than half a million were built in the UK. Ferguson will be remembered for bringing together two great engineering stories of our time, the tractor and the family car, agriculture and transport, both of which have contributed so richly to the well-being of mankind.”
― Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

“The tractor must always be used as an aid to nature, not as a driver of nature. The tractor must work in harmony with the climate, and the fertility of the land, and the humble spirit of the farmers.”
― Marina Lewycka

“Pappa, just stop and think for a minute. Is this really what you want?”
“Hmm. What I want?” (he pronounces it ‘vat I vant’). “Of course to father such a child would be not straightforward. Technically it may be possible…”
The thought of my father having sex with this woman makes my stomach turn.
“…Snag is, hydraulic lift no longer fully functioning. But maybe with Valentina…”
He is lingering over this procreation scenario too much for my taste. Looking at it from different angles. Trying it for size, as it were. “…what do you think?”
― Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

“In the early days of space travel, one interesting problem emerged from experiments with weightlessness. Americans found that ... normal ink pen would not work without gravity feed. Scientists undertook extensive research, finally developed high-technology pen to work in conditions of no gravity. In Russia, scientist faced with the same problem found a different solution. Instead of pen, they used pencil.”
― Marina Lewycka

“Use the technology which the engineer as developed, but use it with a humble and questioning spirit. Never allow technology to be your master, and never use it to gain mastery over others.”
― Marina Lewycka

“There is a special sadness at the end of a journey. For it's only when you get to your destination that you discover the road doesn't end here after all.”
― Marina Lewycka

“Tractors and boobs. There you have it.”
― Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

“Only the image of my father is unclear, as if something obscure but vital has been blotted out, and only the raging surface is left. Who is he, this man whom I have known and not known all my life?”
― Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

“Mother, who had never missed a chance to fulminate against the evils of our time including privatisation, Jeremy Clarkson, and pay-day loans.”
― Marina Lewycka, The Lubetkin Legacy

“Nadia, if all women were to wear paint on their faces, just think, there could be no more natural selection. The inevitable result would be the uglification of the species. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”
― Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

“Although I had long since stopped regarding myself as a Christian, I still thought of Christians as being basically decent, tolerant easy-going types like myself, while Muslims I’d always thought of as, well, let’s say a bit prone to fundamentalism.”
― Marina Lewycka, The Lubetkin Legacy

“Ukraina: he sighs, breathing in the remembered scent of mown hay and cherry blossom. But I catch the distinct synthetic whiff of New Russia. Her”
― Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

“…for only someone who has lived in a totalitarian state can appreciate the true character of paranoia. In 1937, when my father returned to Kiev from Luhansk, the whole country was bathed in a miasma of paranoia.
It seeped everywhere, into the most intimate crevices of people's lives: it soured the relationship between friends and colleagues, between teachers and students, between parents and children, husbands and wives. Enemies were everywhere. If you didn't like the way someone has sold you a piglet, or looked at your girlfriend, or asked for money you owned, or given you a low mark in an exam, a quick word to the NKVD would sort them out...”
― Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

“Da, sve otkako je čovjek prvi put digao glavu iznad ulaza u špilju da pogleda zvijezde na nebu i pomislio kako bi bilo lijepo imati jednu takvu zvijezdu samo za sebe, sanjao je o tome da drugi rade za njega i da on za to plaća što je manje moguće.”
― Marina Lewycka, Two Caravans

“Svaka žena čeka gospodina Browna i njegovu tajanstvenu izbočinu, vjernoga onkraj groba; onda odjednom shvati da ono što čeka uopće ne postoji i da će morati prihvatiti nešto drugorazredno. Kakvo razočarenje.”
― Marina Lewycka, Two Caravans

“There is no solution. I can see no possibility of peace in my lifetime. So long as they continue with their attacks, we will continue our defenses. We are trapped in tits for tats. It is impossible for someone so sensitive like myself to live life this way.”
― Marina Lewycka, We Are All Made of Glue

“With a feeling of despondency so intense that it was almost pleasurable, he got out his guitar.
So this was to be his condition now.What was he but a fragment of broken churned-up
humanity washed up on this faraway shore? This was where his journey had brought him....
There mus be a song in this...”
― Marina Lewycka, Two Caravans

“...the wind in Ukraina blows very hard and cold at this moment. But it will not always be so. And where there is love, there is always enough warmth for the human soul to thrive.”
― Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

“No, it’s the same people who are always in power, Vera. Sometimes they call themselves communists, sometimes capitalists, sometimes devoutly religious—whatever they need to be to hang on to power. The former communists in Russia are the same people who own all the industries now. They’re the real rip-off merchants. But the professional middle classes, people like Valentina’s husband, have been hardest hit.”
― Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

“Fine tuning,' Father explains.
'But will the Rolls-Royce make it to Ukraina?'
'Of course. Why not?”
― Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

“Do people ever make each other happy, Sid, or is happiness just something that's lurking there inside you all the time, waiting for the right moment to come out? Like worms in compost?”
― Marina Lewycka, The Good, the Bad and the Little Bit Stupid

“What happened in war? People died -- that's what happened.' He fixed me with that stubborn clenched-jaw look. 'Those who were bravest perished first. Those who believed in something died for belief. Those who survived...' He starts to cough. 'You know that more than twenty million Soviet citizens perished in this war.”
― Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian

“Es war nicht Backstein und Beton, die aus diesem Gebäude ein Zuhause machten, es war das Netz der Menschen und dieses komische Wort, das die laute Gladys auf ein Stück Stoff gestickt hatte: GEMEINSINN.”
― Marina Lewycka, The Lubetkin Legacy

“reading the Guardian makes you morose compared with the Telegraph. Maybe”
― Marina Lewycka, The Lubetkin Legacy

“When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.”
― Marina Lewycka, The Lubetkin Legacy