Max Nemtsov > Max's Quotes

“Why should things be easy to understand?”
― Thomas Pynchon

“Every weirdo in the world is on my wavelength.”
― Thomas Pynchon

“If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

“Paranoids are not paranoid because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.”
― Thomas Pynchon

“A wise old owl once lived in a wood, the more he heard the less he said, the less he said the more he heard, let's emulate that wise old bird.”
― Flann O'Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds

“What are books but tangible dreams? What is reading if it is not dreaming? The best books cause us to dream; the rest are not worth reading.”
― Rikki Ducornet, The Fan-Maker's Inquisition: A Novel of the Marquis de Sade

“I'll take crazy over stupid any day.”
― Joss Whedon

“I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I'm afraid of. ”
― Joss Whedon

“Two things that matter to me. Emotional resonance and rocket launchers.”
― Joss Whedon

“Very occasionally, if you pay really close attention, life doesn't suck.”
― Joss Whedon

“Write it. Shoot it. Publish it. Crochet it, sauté it, whatever. MAKE.”
― Joss Whedon

“with the breakdown of the medieval system, the gods of chaos, lunacy, and bad taste gained ascendancy.”
― John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“Никакой храбрости тут не было, а просто-напросто одна голая логика, и только. А так как логика - баба, и притом еще голая, то отсюда понятно, почему она восторжествовала.”
― Nikolay Baykov, Собрание. Том 1. Великий Ван. Черный капитан

“То самое, что в старом мире вызывает особенное желание беспощадно разрушить, - например, тайная полиция, - особенно легко приспосабливается к разрушению, жестокости, беспощадности, становится необходимым и непременно сохраняется, делается хозяином в новом мире и в конечном счете убивает смелых разрушителей. ("Туча")”
― Arkady Strugatsky Boris Strugatsky, Пять ложек эликсира: Избранные сценарии

“Если бы кирпичи делать было выгодно, евреи из Египта не ушли бы.”
― Александр Клягин, Страна возможностей необычайных

“Я всегда приветствую каждый закоулок человеческого мозга.”
― Борис Пильняк, Корни японского солнца

“I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

“Shut your eyes and see.”
― James Joyce

“The soul ... has a slow and dark birth, more mysterious than the birth of the body. When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.”
― James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

“The ultimate function of a book, however, is to be read, not to be looked or picked at.”
― Danis Rose and John O'Hanlon. Afterword to The Restored Finnegans Wake

“What is it they want from a man that they didn't get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left of him when he's done his work? What's any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What's left of the man when the work's done but a shambles of apology.”
― William Gaddis, The Recognitions

“No... it never takes your breath away, telling you things you already know, laying everything out flat, as though the terms and the time, and the nature and the movement of everything were secrets of the same magnitude. They write for people who read with the surface of their minds, people with reading habits that make the smallest demands of them, people brought up reading for facts, who know what's going to come next and want to know what's coming next, and get angry at surprises. Clarity's essential, and detail, no fake mysticism, the facts are bad enough. But we're embarrassed for people who tell too much, and tell it without surprise. How does he know what happened, unless it's one unshaven man alone in a boat, changing I to he, and how often do you get a man alone in a boat, in all this... all this...”
― William Gaddis, The Recognitions

“He saw a square room furnished as a library. The entire section of the walls which he could spy was covered from floor to ceiling with books. There were volumes of every size, every shape, every colour. There were long, narrow books that held themselves like grenadiers at stiff attention. There were short, fat books that stood solidly like aldermen who were going to make speeches and were ashamed but not frightened. There were mediocre books bearing themselves with the carelessness of folk who are never looked at and have consequently no shyness. There were solemn books that seemed to be feeling for their spectacles; and there were tattered, important books that had got dirty because they took snuff, and were tattered because they had been crossed in love and had never married afterwards. There were prim, ancient tomes that were certainly ashamed of their heroines and utterly unable to obtain a divorce from the hussies; and there were lean, rakish volumes that leaned carelessly, or perhaps it was with studied elegance, against their neighbours, murmuring in affected tones, "All heroines are charming to us.”
― James Stephens, The Demi-gods

“Ну, а последний советский анекдот знаете? Про «Евгения Онегина»? В советской школе учитель грозно спрашивает ученика: «Кто написал “Евгения Онегина”? Перепуганный ученик отвечает: «Не я». Учитель возмущён и при встрече с отцом мальчика рассказывает об этом случае. Отец подумал, подумал и говорит: «Товарищ учитель, а может, и верно не он?» Учитель окончательно взбешен, идёт по улице, встречает знакомого чекиста, рассказывает ему всю эту историю. Чекист спрашивает: «Как фамилия папаши и адрес?» Учитель сказал, чекист занёс в записную книжку. Встречаются через два дня. «Нашёл папашу вашего мальчишки. Всё наладил: сознался, что сын написал “Евгения Онегина”! У меня это строго, шуток не люблю!»”
― Яков Лович, Враги