Zamyatin Quotes

Enjoy the best quotes on Zamyatin , Explore, save & share top quotes on Zamyatin .

Strictly speaking, she was out of order. This dear 0-, how shall 1 say it?The speed of her tongue is not correctly calculated; the speed per second of her tongue should be slightly less than the speed per second of her thoughts-at any rate not the reverse.

Yevgeny Zamyatin
Save QuoteView Quote

One of the most brilliant Russian writers of the twentieth century, Yevgeny Zamyatin belongs to the tradition in Russian literature represented by Gogol, Leskov, Bely, Remizov, and, in certain aspects of their work, also by Babel and Bulgakov. It is a tradition, paradoxically, of experimenters and innovators. Perhaps the principal quality that unites them is their approach to reality and its uses in art - the refusal to be bound by literal fact, the interweaving of reality and fantasy, the transmutation of fact into poetry, often grotesque, oblique, playful, but always expressive of the writer's unique vision of life in his own, unique terms.

Mirra Ginsburg, The Dragon: Fifteen Stories
Save QuoteView Quote

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

Yevgeny Zamyatin, A Soviet Heretic: Essays by Yevgeny Zamyatin
Save QuoteView Quote

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")

Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
Save QuoteView Quote

They say there is a kind of flower that blooms only once a century, Then couldn't there be one that flowers only once every thousand years - or once every ten thousand years? Maybe there are and we just don't know it because today is itself that once-in-a-thousand-year moment.

Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
Save QuoteView Quote

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

Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
Save QuoteView Quote

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.

Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
Save QuoteView Quote

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. I am pouring it over myself by the bucketload but the logic sizzles on the hot bearings and dissipates elusive white steam into the air.

Yevgeny Zamyatin
Save QuoteView Quote

I'm like a machine being run over its RPM limit. The bearings are overheating: a minute longer and the metal will melt and start dripping and that will be the end of everything. I need a splash of cold water, logic; I pour it on in buckets but the logic hisses on the hot bearings and dissipates in the air as a fleeting white mist

Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
Save QuoteView Quote

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.

Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
Save QuoteView Quote