Robert Chandler > Quotes

“The cramped harsh world he portrays is a paradoxically eloquent assertion of the importance of what is so strikingly absent from it: small acts of kindness.”
― Robert Chandler, Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida

“Death that makes nature quake with dread! today we are gods, tomorrow dust, creatures of poverty and pride, today hope fondly flatters us, tomorrow – man, where are you now? Your hours have barely fled away into the pit of chaos, your time fades like a dream at the new day.”
― Robert Chandler, The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry

“On the abyss’s edge we slide and soon will plunge head first; our life is given us with our death – and we, when we are born, begin to die. Without an ounce of pity, death strikes all things, brings to nothing stars, and suns are quenched by her cold breath – destroyer of the universe.”
― Robert Chandler, The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry

“We’re asleep yet not asleep. We are thinking a strange thought, Thinking we are to be slaughtered, That cranberry branches are burning, That cauldrons are steaming, That steel knives are being sharpened.”
― Robert Chandler, Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov

“He married, but not happily. He hated his wife for breathing with lungs, which crayfish do not possess. He divorced his wife – and spent the rest of his life in the service of an idea.”
― Robert Chandler, Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov

“La Chenille/ Caterpillar

Work hard, poets, work with good cheer:
Work leads to wealth and freedom from fear;
And butterflies, for all their graces,
Are merely caterpillars who persevere.


Guillaume Apollinaire”
― Robert Chandler