Vasily Grossman Quotes

“I used to think freedom was freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of conscience. But freedom is the whole life of everyone. Here is what it amounts to: you have to have the right to sow what you wish to, to make shoes or coats, to bake into bread the flour ground from the grain you have sown, and to sell it or not sell it as you wish; for the lathe operator, the steelworker, and the artist it’s a matter of being able to live as you wish and work as you wish and not as they order you to. And in our country there is no freedom – not for those who write books nor for those who sow grain nor for those who make shoes.” (Grossman, p. 99) He noted that “In people’s day-to-day struggle to live, in the extreme efforts workers put forth to earn an extra ruble through moonlighting, in the collective farmers’ battle for bread and potatoes as the one and only fruit of their labor, he [Ivan Grigoryevich] could sense more than the desire to live better, to fill one’s children’s stomachs and to clothe them. In the battle for the right to make shoes, to knit sweaters, in the struggle to plant what one wished, was manifested the natural, indestructible striving toward freedom inherent in human nature. He had seen this very same struggle in the people in camp. Freedom, it seemed, was immortal on both sides of the barbed wire.” (Grossman, p. 110)”

“The kindest thing you can offer an author is a review and a star rating. So appreciated. THE GOLDEN PEACOCK has had a successful 5-star run on Goodreads and on Amazon. Thank you!” Lauren B. Grossman”

“I've drunk Amazon's free Diet Coke. Nothing makes more sense to me than a company trying to make bookselling into a profitable business. I'm not anti-Amazon, and I'm not pro-publishers either. I'm pro-books.”

“Becoming an author changes your attitude too. Once you see where books come from, and how they're made, they never seem quite as sacred again.”

“Another teen friendship, another tiny mysterious universe.”

“I just completed a long car trip on a Sunday in August with two small children, which believe me is enough to convince you that Samuel Beckett was right about everything.”

“Chess is a game with simple rules and pieces, a small sixty-four-space board, but there are more possible chess games than there are atoms in the universe.”

“The gods were great, but what good was greatness if you didn't love?”

“It's raining outside. How did you get here? And how did you get to be twenty-eight?”

“I call the right axe Sorrow," she said. "You know what I call the left one?" "Happiness?" "Sorrow. I can't tell them apart.”