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“Another fact that allowed Fascism to gain power over men was their blindness. A man cannot believe that he is about to be destroyed. The optimism of people standing on the edge of the grave is astounding.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“In great hearts the cruelty of life gives birth to good.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“...neither fate, nor history, nor the anger of the State, nor the glory or infamy of battle has any power to affect those who call themselves human beings. No, whatever life holds in store --- hard-won glory, poverty and despair, or death in a labor camp --- they will live as human beings and die as human beings, the same as those who have already perished; and in this alone lies man's eternal and bitter victory over all the grandiose and inhuman forces that ever have been or will be...”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“The snow filled the air with a soft grey-blue mist, softening the wind and gunfire, bringing the earth and sky together into one swaying blur.
The snow fell on Bach's shoulders; it was as though flakes of silence were falling on the still Volga, on the dead city, on the skeletons of horses. It was snowing everywhere, on earth and on the stars; the whole universe was full of snow. Everything was disappearing beneath it: guns, the bodies of the dead, filthy dressings, rubble, scraps of twisted iron.
This soft, white snow settling over the carnage of the city was time itself; the present was turning into the past, and there was no future.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate