Russians Quotes

“The Russian soul is a dark place.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

“Truth and justice are commonly found in the personality of the paranoid delusional”
― Russian, Unknown

“Thank God Roxane Coss had not fallen in love with one of the Russians. She doubted they could make it up the stairs without stopping for a cigarette and telling at least one loud story that no one could understand.”
― Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

“Oh, please. I'm such a loser. The only thing that's different about me now versus then is that I got some better clothes and got rid of my accent. You'll probably lose yours, too. But even if you don't, this is just high school. Impressing a bunch of snooty teenagers is a pretty lame life goal to have.”
― Vera Brosgol, Anya's Ghost

“You need only to add balalaikas, sonorous songs of the Volga, a disorderly dance and there you have it--the Russian emigration.”
― Helen Rappaport, After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque Through Revolution and War

“His wife, "who only demanded of life that it should amuse her".”
― Helen Rappaport, After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque Through Revolution and War

“Paul and Olga enjoyed a gilded exile with their two daughters, in a home created together that was "worthy of a Pompadour or a Du Barry.”
― Helen Rappaport, After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque Through Revolution and War

“The Bolsheviks are coming, like Atilla, like clouds of locusts. They are destroying everything in their path. (Vera Muromtseva)”
― Helen Rappaport, After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque Through Revolution and War

“Que faire?' became proverbial among the émigré community in Paris, because it encapsulated their sense of hopelessness and the Russian fatalistic attitude toward life.”
― Helen Rappaport, After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque Through Revolution and War

“When the soul is dead and the body is the only concern, there's not much to get excited about...the only thing alive for me now is our literature.”
― Helen Rappaport, After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque Through Revolution and War

“Anecdotes are funny when you tell them," said Teffi. "But when you live through them it's a tragedy. And my life is one big joke-- in other words, a tragedy.”
― Helen Rappaport, After the Romanovs: Russian Exiles in Paris from the Belle Époque Through Revolution and War

“Несовпадение душ неизменное
порождает вопросы пустые,
суету дополняя душевную
объясненьями непростыми...”
― Ekaterina Yakovina, Prikosnovenie Vechnosti

“Russia will never be really civilized, because it was civilized too soon. Peter has a genius for imitation; but he lacked true genius, which is creative and makes all from nothing. ... His first wish was to make Germans or Englishmen, when he ought to have been making Russians; and he prevented his subjects from ever becoming what they might have been by persuading them that they were what they are not.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract

“Уся Росія - країна якихось жадібних і лінивих людей: вони страшенно багато їдять, п'ють, люблять спати вдень й уві сні хропуть. Одружуються вони задля порядку в домі, а коханок заводять задля престижу в суспільстві. Психологія у них собача: б'ють їх - вони тихесенько поскиглюють і ховаються по своїх норах, приголублять - вони лягають на спину, лапки догори й виляють хвостиками.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Are all Russians crazy?
Yes, he said with a smile. It is the only way to be Russian and happy at the same time.
That's dark.
That's Russian!”
― Andy Weir, Project Hail Mary

“When I asked [her maternal grandmother that lived to the age of 103] what she remembered about the First and Second World Wars, she told me the following: “Germans are very correct. The Italians always look for a piano and want to make a party. But when the Russians come, everyone runs away because they rape all the women, young and old alike.”
― Marina Abramović, Walk Through Walls: A Memoir

“Christianity cannot be reduced to sentimental compassion, because it must be just. Compassionate Europeans need to realize that by taking Russians out of responsibility, they are actually doing them a disservice. Because the crime of the Russian state in Ukraine, not understood as a sin and not brought out of the soul through repentance, will inevitably lead to an even worse sin. To truly love the Russians is precisely to reveal to them the scale of their crime, to allow them to be horrified by what they have done, and to direct their souls to sincere repentance before God and men. Only after the collective Russian soul stumbles before the burden of its own responsibility and washes away tears of repentance before the victims, only then will it open the door to the future.”
― Мирослав Маринович

“Так тихо

Так тихо, что слышно,
как ходит Тишина
в белой одежде облаков.

Так тихо, что слышно,
как восходит солнце
из-за темных старых гор.

Молодой день входит в город.
Утренние птицы у него на плечах.

Тишина прощается с городом –
Так тихо,
что слышно, как раскрываются
утренние цветы.
________________


So quiet that you can hear
how the silence walks
dressed in white clouds.

So quiet that you can hear
as the sun rises
because of the dark old mountains.

A young day enters the city.
Morning birds on his shoulders.

Silence says goodbye to the city -
So quiet,
what is heard, how they are revealed
morning flowers.”
― Ekaterina Yakovina, Prikosnovenie Vechnosti

“I'm Russian," Misha said with the faintest hint of a smile.. "We angst, Max."

"I see that. Well, I'm American. We force shit on other people if we think they need it. Like democracy. And pop music.”
― Avon Gale, Power Play

“The Russians are fascinating, ingenious, creative, sentimental, warm-hearted, generous, obstinately courageous, endlessly tough, often devious, brutal and ruthless. Ordinary Russians firmly believe that they are warmer-hearted than others, more loyal to their friends, more willing to sacrifice themselves for the common good, more devoted to the fundamental truths of life. They give the credit to the Russian soul, as broad and all-embracing as the Russian land itself. Their passionate sense of Russia’s greatness is paradoxically undermined by an underlying and corrosive pessimism. And it is tempered by resentment that their country is insufficiently understood and respected by foreigners.”
― Rodric Braithwaite, Russia: Myths and Realities: The History of a Country with an Unpredictable Past

“The Ukraine war is surprising. Russians killing past Russians in Ukraine. It just seems so bizarre! It is basically a territorial civil war that has been turned into an international proxy war.”
― Steven Magee

“As they crossed the assembly yard, all three men suddenly heard the start up of construction noise, coming from the nearby thick forest, on the far side of the wire. A distant whistle, some shouts, and the rat-a-tat of hammers and the ripping sound of handsaws. "They start those poor bastards early, don't they?" Scott asked rhetorically. "And then they work them late. Makes you glad you weren't born a Russian," he said. Then he smiled wryly. "You know, there's probably a joke in that some- where. Do you suppose right now one of those poor s.o.b.'s is saying he's glad he wasn't born black in America? After all, the damn Germans are just working them to death. Me? I've got to worry about my own country- men shooting me.”
― John Katzenbach, Hart's War

“Volodymyr Zelensky appears to be losing the support of the Ukrainians as they are watching their people being displaced, their country being destroyed and their men being killed instead of negotiating a peace deal with the Russians.”
― Steven Magee

“Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe.”
― Steven Magee

“Ukraine has massive corruption issues.”
― Steven Magee

“You cannot rely on information coming out of a war zone.”
― Steven Magee

“The Ukraine war has facilitated hundreds of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians to meet God.”
― Steven Magee

“Ukraine war = Evil.”
― Steven Magee

“Suffering is our [Russians'] capital. Not oil or gas--but suffering. It is the only thing we are able to produce consistently....But great books are piled at our feet.

--from the Nobel Prize lecture (2015)”
― Svetlana Alexievich

“It seems likely the Russians never understood this inherent dichotomy in the American soul. They were genuinely irritated when the United States agreed to a world in which power ruled in 1944, then reneged and wanted some kind of parliamentary world democracy in 1945. This did seem double dealing, but it was hard for Russians to grasp the difficulties of the State Department, which, unlike the Soviet Foreign Office, could not wheel and deal with no regard to public consumption.”
― T.R. Fehrenbach, This kind of peace