Great Benefactor! How absurd- to want pain! Can there be anyone who doesn’t know that pain is a negative quality, and that if you add them up it reduces the sum we call happiness? so...

The moon hangs alien, heavy, like a lock on a door; the door is tightly shut. (“The North”)

Cruel’, O’Kelly laughed, ‘it’s cruel to tell children the truth. If anything convinces me of God’s mercy, then it’s his gift of making us unable to lie.

There is no final one; revolutions are infinite.

The sun’s champagne streamed from one body into another. And there was a couple on the green silk of the grass, covered by a raspberry umbrella. Only their feet and a little bit of lace...

Do you believe that you will die? Yes, man is mortal, I am a man, ergo… No, that isn’t what I mean. I know that you know that. What I’m asking is: Have you ever...

The most agonising thing is to drop doubt into a man about his being a reality, three-dimensional – and not some other kind of reality.

Gripped with bitter cold, ice-locked, Petersburg burned in delirium. One knew: out there, invisible behind the curtain of fog, the red and yellow columns, spires, and hoary gates and fences crept on tiptoe, creaking and...

Happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.

Revolution is everywhere, in everything. There is no final revolution, no final number.

Darkness. The door into the neighboring room is not quite shut. A strip of light stretches through the crack in the door across the ceiling. People are walking about by lamplight. Something has happened. The...

But you can’t plead with autumn. No. The midnight wind stalked through the woods, hooted to frighten you, swept everything away for the approaching winter, whirled the leaves. (“The North”)

If human foolishness had been as carefully nurtured and cultivated as intelligence has been for centuries, perhaps it would have turned into something extremely precious.

In the widely open cup of the armchair was I-330. I, on the floor, embracing her limbs, my head on her lap. We were silent. Everything was silent. Only the pulse was audible. Like a...

We have long become overgrown with calluses; we no longer hear people being killed. (“X”)

A Provincial Tale”)

Then how can there be a final revolution? There is no final one; revolutions are infinite.

So, take the idea of “rights” and drip some acid on it. Even the most adult of the Ancients knew: the source of a right is power, a right is a function of power. Take...

The government (or humanity) would not permit capital punishment for one man, but they permitted the murder of millions a little at a time.

I’m like a machine being run over its RPM limit: The bearings are overheating – a minute longer, and the metal is going to melt and start dripping and that’ll be the end of everything....

The flame will cool tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow (in the Book of Genesis days are equal to years, ages). But someone must see this already today, and speak heretically today about tomorrow. Heretics...

If we have no heretics we must invent them, for heresy is essential to health and growth.

Explosions are not comfortable.

Children are the only bold philosophers. And bold philosophers are invariably children.

True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics.

Revolutions are infinite.

Life itself has lost its plane reality: it is projected, not along the old fixed points, but along the dynamic coordinates of Einstein, of revolution. In this new projection, the best-known formulas and objects become...

Heretics are the only bitter remedy against the entropy of human thought.

He plashed away, like paddles on water, toward the door, and every step he made returned to me gradually my feet, my hands, my fingers. My soul again spread equally throughout my body. I was...

Heretics are the only [bitter] remedy against the entropy of human thought.(“Literature, Revolution, and Entropy”)

The nights were long, like the braids of a pretty girl, and the days were short, like a girl’s sense. (“The North”)

Letter To Stalin”)

I am like a machine being driven to excessive rotations: the bearings are incandescing and, in a minute, melted metal will begin to drip and everything will turn to nothing. Quick: get cold water, logic....

But clouds bellied out in the sultry heat, the sky cracked open with a crimson gash, spewed flame-and the ancient forest began to smoke. By morning there was a mass of booming, fiery tongues, a...

Literature is painting, architecture, and music.

White-crested waves crash on the shore. The masts sway violently, every which way. In the gray sky the gulls are circling like white flakes. Rain squalls blow past like gray slanting sails, and blue gaps...

What we need in literature today are vast philosophic horizons; we need the most ultimate, the most fearsome, the most fearless ‘Why?’ and ‘What next?'(“Literature, Revolution, and Entropy”)

The only reason I’m writing this down is to show how human reason, even very sharp and exact human reason, can get crazily confused and thrown off the track.

But a thought swarmed in me; what if he, this yellow-eyed being – in his ridiculous, dirty bundle of trees, in his uncalculated life – is happier than us?

We need writers who fear nothing. (“Our Goal”)

Tomorrow”)

Accentuated plainness and accentuated vice ought to bring about harmony. Beauty lies in harmony, in style, whether it be the harmony of ugliness or beauty, vice or virtue.

And I learned from my own experience that laughter was the most potent weapon: laughter can kill everything.

You are afraid of it because it is stronger than you; you hate it because you are afraid of it; you love it because you cannot subdue it to your will. Only the unsubduable can...

…sentences of the court on moral issues are always passed in absentia.

The most effective way of destroying art is the canonization of one given form. And one philosophy.

Eh-hey!” the redhead suddenly snatches the tambourine and sweeps off, tapping wildly in a circle. Eyes closed: a white sleepless sun-a white night on the meadow-white columns of smoke swaying over fires…”Eh-ah!”-to whirl herself to...

The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom.

A Story About The Most Important Thing”)

A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don’t know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn’t be worth reading.