Moscow Quotes

“Moscow appeared to her as an Asiatic sprawl of twisting streets, wooden shanties, and horse cabs. But already another Moscow was rising up through the chaos of the first. Streets built to accommodate donkey tracks have been torn open and replaced with boulevards broader than two or three Park Avenues. On the sidewalks, pedestrians were being detoured onto planks around enormous construction pits. A smell of sawdust and metal filings hung in the air”

“One does not go to Moscow to get fat.”

“Though he never actually joined it, he was close to some civilian elements of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which was the most Communist (and in the rather orthodox sense) of the Palestinian formations. I remember Edward once surprising me by saying, and apropos of nothing: 'Do you know something I have never done in my political career? I have never publicly criticized the Soviet Union. It’s not that I terribly sympathize with them or anything—it's just that the Soviets have never done anything to harm me, or us.' At the time I thought this a rather naïve statement, even perhaps a slightly contemptible one, but by then I had been in parts of the Middle East where it could come as a blessed relief to meet a consecrated Moscow-line atheist-dogmatist, if only for the comparatively rational humanism that he evinced amid so much religious barking and mania. It was only later to occur to me that Edward's pronounced dislike of George Orwell was something to which I ought to have paid more attention.”

“In the legal respect, after the execution of the supposed incendiaries, the other half of Moscow burned down.”

“And by the way, my belief is that if men were the ones getting pregnant, abortions would be easier to get than food poisoning in Moscow”

“Those who really value Ukrainian sovereignty should opt for real independence and a positive neutrality: neither a plaything of the West nor Moscow.”

“Be willing to be sneered at than to be approved, counting the cross of Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Washington, London, Paris, or Moscow.”

“Mac had many admirable qualities, but not tact. He was the sort of man who would have tried to cheer Napoleon up by talking about the Winter Sports at Moscow.”

“Mike nodded. A sombre nod. The nod Napoleon might have given if somebody had met him in 1812 and said, "So, you're back from Moscow, eh?”

“Our country is Germany -- one country that should be reunited. We don't belong to Moscow or to the west. We belong to ourselves and I have never betrayed that. This tunnel has taken every ounce of courage we have. We're not cowards.”