Dmitri Quotes

“You refused to fall in love with anyone else, Dmitri.” A whisper with the impact of a gun-shot. “So I had to come back for you . . . husband.”

“I can smell blood, Elena,” Dmitri drawled, walking back into the room. “Are you trying to flirt?”

“In my time,” he said, “they believed in witches. Are you a witch, Honor, that you make me say these things to you?” Causing him to rip open wounds that had stayed safely scabbed over for so long that, most of the time, he managed to forget they existed. Her hands, so very, very gentle, continued to hold his face as she tugged him down until their foreheads touched. “I’m no witch, Dmitri. If I was, I’d know how to fix you.”

“I have achieved an inner freedom.”

“I want you to have this feeling too - it is my moral responsibility to help you achieve this inner freedom.”

“There is nothing in this world that I fear to say.”

“Work, look for peace and calm in work: you will find it nowhere else.”

“Why do they [Americans] quarrel, why do they hate Negroes, Indians, even Germans, why do they not have science and poetry commensurate with themselves, why are there so many frauds and so much nonsense? I cannot soon give a solution to these questions ... It was clear that in the United States there was a development not of the best, but of the middle and worst sides of European civilization; the notorious general voting, the tendency to politics... all the same as in Europe. A new dawn is not to be seen on this side of the ocean.”

“I'll admit that writing doesn't always come, but I'm totally against walking around looking at the sky when you're experiencing a block, waiting for inspiration to strike you. Tchaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov didn't like each other and agreed on very few things, but they were of one opinion on this: you had to write constantly. If you can't write a major work, write minor trifles. If you can't write at all, orchestrate something.”