Grey Bees Quotes

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

“What happened is what Putin says happened," she insisted.

"Putin doesn't lie.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees

“The detective turned and fixed his eyes on an icon of the Mother of God that hung on the wall.

Sergeyich swallowed nervously. He too looked at the icon, then shifted his gaze to a portrait of the Russian president, which hung to the right of it.”
― 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

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

“he realised, for the umpteenth time, that while dreams are nothing but movies, their soundtrack is often drawn from real life.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees

“It's better to talk when you're with a person, anyway - when their voice isn't torn loose from their body, when you can see them.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees

“It was foolish to worry about time, of course. Time plays a role when there’s someone to keep track of it, to depend on it. And if no-one like that remains, then time, too, stops and disappears.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees

“Sergeyich struck a match - and the sound of it also blended into the silence, becoming its property, an integral part of it, a note in its endless music.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees

“A new morning was dawning grey outside the window.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees

“Sergeyich kept thinking of these policemen in body armour. He reflected on the fact that bees and ants also had their guards, who maintained order and protected families from foreign incursions. He also thought that people might learn a thing or two about maintaining order from bees. 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”
― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees