Andrey Kurkov > Quotes

“The past believed in dates. And everyone’s life consisted of dates, giving life a rhythm and sense of gradation, as if from the eminence of a date one could look back and down, and see the past itself. A clear, comprehensible past, divided up into squares of events, lines of paths taken.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Death and the Penguin

“Life was a road, and if departed from at a tangent, the longer for it. And a long road was a long life - a case where to travel was better than to arrive, the point of arrival being, after all, always the same: death.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Death and the Penguin

“Yesterday, Parliament announced an open forum day. Everyone was given the chance to speak. Or, in other words, no one listened.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Ukraine Diaries

“After all, bees alone had managed to establish communism in their hives, thanks to their orderliness and labour. Ants, on the other hand, had only reached the stage of real, natural socialism; this was because they had nothing to produce, and so had merely mastered order and equality. But people? People had neither order nor equality. Even their police were useless, just loafing around by the fence”
― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees

“Putin’s calculation is simple: a Ukraine with a permanent war in its eastern region will never be fully welcomed by Europe or the rest of the world.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees

“The silence grew louder, more evident. One could stroke it, as one would a cat or a dog; it was warm, and it brushed up against Sergeyich gently, pleading for his involvement, his participation in its life, its sounds.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees

“The once terrible was now commonplace, meaning that people accepted it as the norm and went on living, instead of getting needlessly agitated.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Death and the Penguin

“Longevity depended on peace. Peace was the source of self-assurance, and self-assurance allowed one to cleanse one's life of needless upsets, twists and turns. Self-assurance allowed one to take decisions for the prolonging of one's life. Self-assurance led to the future.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Death and the Penguin

“Even reading the news feed on the Internet, you can sense which information is credible among all the thousands of propagandist lies.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Ukraine Diaries

“To every time, its own normality.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Death and the Penguin

“Somewhere far off a cannon sounded. Half a minute later there was another blast, which seemed to come from the opposite direction.
"Fools can't get to sleep," Sergeyich said to himself. "Probably just warming their hands.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees

“In one of my novels I described a secret factory, hidden away in the Ural Mountains, which produced artificial meteorites. The dream of the Soviet military’s high command: bombarding the United States with artificial meteorites, while making people believe they were real ones.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Ukraine Diaries

“No matter," said the old man hoarsely. "Means you're still alive if it hurts.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Death and the Penguin

“So they blew something up, he thought. Wasn't that close - just a big-calibre gun. If it had been close, it would have thrown me out of bed. And if the shell had hit the house, I'd have stayed in my dream, where it's cosier and warmer than in life.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees

“There had been nothing but snow, and if you looked at it long enough, you would begin to hear a white noice - a kind of silence that takes hold of your soul with its cold hands and doesn't release it for a long time.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees

“No computers?” Zhora asked in amazement, touring the house in search of where to establish himself. “My games I play live,” said Andrey Pavlovich”
― Andrey Kurkov, Penguin Lost

“He sat with his cup of tea at the kitchen table. On the window ledge beside him stood the two bottles of cherry brandy, one half empty, the other full. Romantic thoughts stirred in the silence, touching again on unwritten novels and the past. He suddenly had the sensation of being abroad, out of reach of yesterday’s existence. This abroad was a place of tranquillity, a Switzerland of the soul blanketed in snows of peace, permeated with a dread of causing disturbance; where no bird sang or called, as if out of no desire to.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Death and the Penguin

“The full story is what you get told only if and when your work, and with it your existence, are no longer required.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Death and the Penguin

“All’s well! You’re sold into slavery! We can go, they’re expecting you.” “How do you mean, slavery?” “It’s the way they put it here. Chechen men don’t work, slaves work for them. If I’d offered them you without charge, they wouldn’t have trusted me. They’d have taken you for Fed Security.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Penguin Lost

“Sergeyich diluted his bitter thoughts with honey and felt better.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees

“I do not want to believe everything I read in the press. The papers, particularly the online editions, publish a lot of false news.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Ukraine Diaries

“News you can't read calmly, don't read at all!”
― Andrey Kurkov

“The crackly, unobtrusive music of the fire was now accompanied by a barely audible chorus of bee-wings emerging from the hives.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees

“But I can do it,” she said, sitting down on the carpet again. “It's just that I'm heavier after breakfast.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Death and the Penguin

“Mais vous avez dû tomber amoureux, n'est-ce pas ? Vous êtes devenu du jour au lendemain un homme heureux ! C'est ça ? Les gens heureux, tant qu'ils sont heureux, ne remarquent pas les anomalies, mais ce n'est que temporaire. Les anomalies sont toujours là, à côté d'eux!”
― Andreï Kourkov

“Well, this is their land,” the beekeeper offered timidly. “The hell it is!” the woman said indignantly, but without malice. “This land’s been Russian Orthodox since time immemorial! Russians brought Orthodoxy from Turkey, brought it to Chersonesus, back before there were any Muslims. It was later that the Turks sent in the Tatars, along with their Islam. When Putin was here, he told the whole story – this is sacred Russian land.” “Well, I haven’t looked into the history,” Sergeyich shrugged. “Who knows what happened?” “What happened is what Putin says happened,” she insisted. “Putin doesn’t lie.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees

“Il ne voulait penser qu'à elle, à Darka, comme si c'était pour la revoir qu'il lui fallait foncer à bord d'une vieille guimbarde dans les rues les plus cahoteuses de Lviv, secouer ses passagers pour les libérer de leurs calculs rénaux et aller ensuite la rejoindre, retrouver son guichet éclairé toute la nuit, rempart de lumière protégeant sa magicienne aux longs gants colorés.”
― Andreï Kourkov

“Only in Italy are elections as carnivalesque as they are here. Except, in Ukraine, the carnival is always anarchistic, and more or less uncontrollable.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Ukraine Diaries

“When it comes to family, who knows which is more important: love or tolerance?”
― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees

“He looked down at the entrance again. The bees, returning home with pollen on their legs, were pushing and shoving one another, each trying to get inside before the others.

"Come now, don't act like people," he reproached them.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees