Russian author (1884-1937)
There are books of the same chemical composition as dynamite. The only difference is that a piece of dynamite explodes once, whereas a book explodes a thousand times.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
A Soviet Heretic
The nights were long, like the braids of a pretty girl, and the days were short, like a girl's sense.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
The Dragon: Fifteen Stories
Nobody heard the deacon cry as he swung the cleaver. Everyone from eighteen to fifty was busy with the peaceful revolutionary work of preparing supper.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
The Dragon: Fifteen Stories
Don't forget that we lawyers, we're a higher breed of intellect, and so it's our privilege to lie. It's as clear as day. Animals can't even imagine lying: if you were to find yourself among some wild islanders, they too would only speak the truth until they learned about European culture.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
Islanders and the Fisher of Men
All women are lips, nothing but lips.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
How do you know that nonsense isn't a good thing? If human nonsense had been nurtured and developed for centuries, just as intelligence has, then perhaps something extraordinarily precious could have come from it.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
The myth about the angel who rebelled against his Lord is the most beautiful of all myths, the proudest, the most revolutionary, the most immortal of them all.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
The Day and the Age
Children are the only brave philosophers. And brave philosophers are, inevitably, children.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
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.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
Children are the boldest philosophers. They enter life naked, not covered by the smallest fig leaf of dogma, absolutes, creeds. This is why every question they ask is so absurdly naïve and so frighteningly complex.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters
The purpose of art, including literature, is not to reflect life but to organize it, to build it.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
The Goal
I've read and heard a lot of unbelievable stuff about those times when people lived in freedom -- that is, in disorganized wildness.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
I no longer live in our clear, rational world; I live in the ancient nightmare world, the world of square roots of minus one.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
Sentences of the court on moral issues are always passed in absentia.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
Islanders and the Fisher of Men
And tomorrow--who knows what happens? Do you get it? I don't know and no one knows--it's all unknown! You understand, that this is the end to the Known? This is the new, the improbable, the unpredictable.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
We have lived through the epoch of suppression of the masses; we are living in an epoch of suppression of the individual in the name of the masses; tomorrow will bring the liberation of the individual -- in the name of man.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
Tomorrow
The mighty power of logic cleanses all it touches.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
The old, slow, creaking descriptions are a thing of the past; today the rule is brevity -- but every word must be supercharged, high-voltage.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
A Soviet Heretic
At night numbers must sleep; it is their duty, just as it is their duty to work in the daytime. Not sleeping at night is a criminal offense.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
The art of the word is painting + architecture + music.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
The New Russian Prose