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Kolyma Tales QUOTES

Kolyma Tales QUOTES

1 " If bones could freeze, then the brain could also be dulled and the soul could freeze over. And the soul shuddered and froze- perhaps to remain frozen forever. "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales

2 " Le poète se mourait depuis si longtemps qu'il avait cessé de comprendre que c'était la mort. Parfois, une idée simple et forte se frayait un chemin à travers son cerveau, douloureuse et presque palpable : qu'on lui avait volé le pain qu'il avait mis sous sa tête. "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales

3 " Tragedy is not deep and sharp if it can be shared with friend. "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales

4 " Life repeats Shakespearian themes more often than we think. Did Lady Macbeth, Richard III, and King Claudius exist only in the Middle Ages? Shylock wanted to cut a pound of flesh from the body of the merchant of Venice. Is that a fairy tale? "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales

5 " We realized that life, even the worst of life, consists of an alternation of joys and sorrow, successes and failure more than the successes. "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales

6 " I remember the old northern legend of how God created the taiga while he was still a child. There were few colors, but they were childishly fresh and vivid, and their subjects were simple. Later, when God grew up and became an adult, he learned to cut out complicated patters from his pages and created many bright birds. God grew bored with his former child's world and he threw snow on his forest creation and went south forever. "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales

7 " Cold, hunger, and sleeplessness rendered any friendship impossible, and Dugaev – despite his youth – understood the falseness of the belief that friendship could be tempered by misery and tragedy. For friendship to be friendship, its foundation had to be laid before living conditions reached that last border beyond which no human emotion was left to a man – only mistrust, rage, and lies. Dugaev remembered well the northern proverb that listed the three commandments of prison life: ‘Don’t believe, don’t fear, don’t ask. "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales

8 " We realized that life, even the worst life, consists of an alternation of joys and sorrows, successes and failures, and there was no need to fear the failures more than the successes. "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales

9 " We learned one other amazing thing: in the eyes of the state and its representatives a physically strong person was better – yes, better – more moral, more valuable than a weak person who couldn’t shovel twenty cubic meters of dirt out of a trench in a day. The former was more moral than the latter. He fulfilled his ‘quota’, that is, carried out his chief duty to the state and society and was therefore respected by all. His advice was asked and his desires were taken into consideration, he was invited to meetings whose topics were far removed from shovelling heavy slippery dirt from wet and slimy ditches. "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales

10 " Friendship is not born in conditions of need or trouble. Literary fairy tales tell of ‘difficult’ conditions which are an essential element in forming any friendship, but such conditions are simply not difficult enough. If tragedy and need brought people together and gave birth to their friendship, then the need was not extreme and the tragedy not great. Tragedy is not deep and sharp if it can be shared with friends. "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales

11 " Nothing could be avoided, and nothing could be foreseen. What was the point of unnecessary fear? "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales

12 " A horse can't endure even a month of the local winter life in a cold stall if it's worked hard hours in subzero weather. . . . But man lives on. Perhaps he lives by virtue of his hopes? But he doesn't have any hope . . . . . He is saved by a drive for self-preservation, a tenacious clinging to life, a physical tenacity to which his entire consciousness is subordinated. He lives on the same things as a bird or a dog, but he clings more strongly to life than they do. He has a greater endurance than that of any animal. "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales

13 " Friendship is not born in conditions of need or trouble. Literary fairy tales tell of ‘difficult’ conditions which are an essential element in forming any friendship, but such conditions are simply not difficult enough. If tragedy and need brought people together and gave birth to their friendship, then the need was not extreme and the tragedy not great. Tragedy is not deep and sharp if it can be shared with friends. Only real need can determine one’s spiritual and physical strength and set the limits of one’s physical endurance and moral courage. "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales

14 " I'm dressed appropriate for the season mama, I'm dressed appropriately for the season. "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales

15 " That same sense of direction that animals possess perfectly also awakens in man under the right conditions. "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales

16 " Real friendship needed to have firm foundations laid before the conditions of everyday life had reached the extreme point beyond which human beings have nothing human about them except mistrust, anger, and lies. "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales

17 " Trees in the north die lying down – like people. "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales

18 " Well, I’ve been here since thirty-eight. I was at Elgen first. I did thirty childbirths there; before Elgen I hadn’t done any. Then came the war. My husband died in Kiev. So did my two children. Boys. A bomb. More people have died around me than in any battle in war. They died when there was no war, before there was a war. All the same. Grief is like happiness: it comes in all forms. "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales

19 " Literary fairy tales tell of ‘difficult’ conditions which are an essential element in forming any friendship, but such conditions are simply not difficult enough. "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales

20 " I believed a person could consider himself a human being as long as he felt totally prepared to kill himself, to interfere in his own biography. It was this awareness that gave me the will to live. I checked myself — frequently — and felt I had the strength to die, and thus remained alive. "

― Varlam Shalamov , Kolyma Tales