Kolyma Stories Quotes

“I discovered that the world should be divided not into good and bad people but into cowards and non-cowards. Ninety-five percent of cowards are capable of the vilest things, lethal things, at the mildest threat.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“Nothing could be avoided, and nothing could be foreseen. What was the point of unnecessary fear?”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“I saw that the only group of people able to preserve a minimum of humanity in conditions of starvation and abuse were the religious believers, the sectarians (almost all of them), and most priests. Party workers and the military are the first to fall apart and do so most easily.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“We were disciplined and obedient to authority. We realized that truth and lies were twin sisters, and that truth on earth came in thousands of different forms.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“Not a lot of flesh was left on my bones. This flesh sufficed only for malice, the last human feeling to go. Not indifference but malice was the last human feeling, it was the closest to the bone.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“Real friendship needed to have firm foundations laid before the conditions of everyday life had reached the extreme point beyond which human beings have nothing human about them except mistrust, anger, and lies.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“All my life I have been unable to make myself call a swine a decent human being. And I believe it's better not to be alive at all if you can't say a word to anyone, or if you can only say the opposite of what you think.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“The agnosticism I had upheld throughout my conscious life had not made me a Christian. But in the camps I had not seen better people than the believers. Depravity affected everyone's souls; only the believers held out.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“Only one group of people kept their humanity in the camps, the believers, whether Orthodox or sectarians.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories