Dmitry Glukhovsky Quotes

Humans had always been better at killing than any other living thing.

There's only one thing that can save a man from madness and that's uncertainty.

And what if there’s nothing in there?’ You die and there’s nothing beyond that. Nothing. Nothing remains. Someone might remember you for a little while after but not for long.

And then, after five minutes of silence, almost inaudibly, the old man sighed and said, more to himself than to Artyom: ‘Lord, what a splendid world we ruined . . .

The number of places in paradise is limited; only in hell is entry open to all.

Never discuss the rights of the strong. You are too weak to do that. -Khan

Cut the chatter!' interrupted Melnick, fiercely. 'Don't you know librarians can't stand noise? For them, noise is like waving a red rag in front of a bull.

Люди всегда умели убивать лучше, чем любое другое живое существо.

Who came up with the idea that telling the truth is easy? That's already a lie.

we live by legends, and not by bread alone.

But if they have a flashlight, it means they're human and not some kind of monsters from the surface,' objected Artyom. "I don't know what's worse," said Melnik, cutting off Artyom.

Lord, what a splendid world we ruined

As long as man is alive, he will always deem himself to be the light of the world, and consider his enemies as the darkness. And they will be thinking like that on both sides of the front.

Do you know the parable about the frog in the cream? Two frogs landed in a pail of cream. One, thinking rationally, understood straight away that there was no point in resistance and that you can’t deceive destiny. But then what if there’s an afterlife – why bother jumping around, entertaining false hopes in vain? He crossed his legs and sank to the bottom. The second, the fool, was probably an atheist. And she started to flop around. It would seem that she had no reason to flail about if everything was predestined. But she flopped around and flopped around anyway . . . Meanwhile, the cream turned to butter. And she crawled out. We honour the memory of this second frog’s friend, eternally damned for the sake of progress and rational thought.

Any faith served man only as a crutch supporting him.

Welcome to the First International Red Fighting Brigade of the Moscow Metropolitan in the name of Ernesto Che Guevara!

He who is brave and patient enough to peer into the darkness his whole life will be first to see a flicker of light in it.

I 'm reading now Metro 2033.It looks intresting so far

Hate is a fine antidote for fear.

Could anyone who had never seen stars possibly imagine what infinity is, when, most likely, the very concept of infinity first appeared among humans inspired, once upon a time, by the nocturnal vault of the heavens?

There are some things that you don’t want to do and you pledge to yourself that you won’t do, you forbid yourself, and then suddenly they happen all by themselves. You don’t even have time to think about them, and they don’t make it to the cognitive centres of the brain: they just happen and that’s it, and you’re left just watching yourself with surprise, and convincing yourself that it wasn’t your fault, it just happened all by itself.

There was nothing: just an empty, dark tunnel he was supposed to plod his way through, from “Birth” station to “Death” station. Those looking for faith had simply been trying to find the side branches in this line. But there were only two stations, and only tunnel connecting them.

Getting a new version of the answer every day, Artyom was unable to compel himself to believe what was true, because the next day another, no less precise and comprehensive one, might arise. Whom should he believe? And in what? ... Any faith served man only as a crutch supporting him. ... He understood why man needs this support. Without it, life would have become empty, like an abandoned tunnel.

His delight at seeing this creation of human hands was mixed with the bitterness of finally understanding that nothing like it ever would be created again.

Slowly, slowly, his soul was filled with bitterness at the fact that he had stood a step away from enlightenment, from the most real enlightenment, but he hadn’t been resolute, he hadn’t dare give himself to the flow of the tunnel’s ether, and now he would be left to wander in the darkness for his whole life because he was once too afraid of the light of authentic knowledge.

Now he only had an abstract interest in what was surrounding him, as though none of this was happening to him, but he was just reading a book about it. The fate of the main character interested him, of course, but if he was killed then he could just pick another book off the shelf - one with a happy ending.

Hope is like blood. While it still flows through your veins, you’re alive. I want to hope.

Quien tenga el valor y la perseverancia necesarios para pasarse la vida escudriñando las tinieblas, también será el primero que reconozca el despuntar de la aurora. Kan

И все это для чего? Чтобы своей кровью искупить грех первого человека, которого Бог сам же спровоцировал и наказал, и чтобы люди вернулись в рай и вновь обрели бессмертие. Какая-то бессмысленная возня, ведь можно было просто не наказывать так строго их всех за то, чего они даже не делали. Или отменить наказание за сроком давности. Но зачем жертвовать любимым сыном, да еще и предавать его? Где здесь любовь, где здесь готовность прощать, где здесь всемогущество?

Този, който има достатъчно храброст и търпение да се вглежда цял живот в мрака, пръв ще види проблясъка светлина в него.

El ser humano ha sido siempre un asesino muy superior al resto de criaturas".

Millions of shining lights, silver nails driven into a dome of dark blue velvet . . .

It was as if, having been driven off course, he nevertheless was able to recover his feet on the shining rails of his fate.

It’s so much easier for people to die when they believe in something! For those who believe that death isn’t the end of everything. For those in whose eyes the world is separated into black and white – who know exactly what they need to do and why, who hold the torch of an idea, of beliefs, in their hands, and everything they see is illuminated by it. Those who have nothing to doubt and nothing to regret. They must have an easy time of dying. They die with a smile on their face.

Why was he doing this? So that life could continue in the metro? Right. So that they could grow mushrooms and pigs at VDNKh in the future, and so that his stepfather and Zhenkina’s family lived there in peace, so that people unknown to him could settle at Alekseevskaya and at Rizhskaya, and so that the uneasy bustle of trade at Byelorusskaya didn’t die away. So that the Brahmins could stroll about Polis in their robes and rustle the pages of books, grasping the ancient knowledge and passing it on to subsequent generations. So that the fascists could build their Reich, capturing racial enemies and torturing them to death, and so that the Worm people could spirit away strangers’ children and eat adults, and so that the woman at Mayakovskaya could bargain with her young son in the future, earning herself and him some bread. So that the rat races at Paveletskaya didn’t end, and the fighters of the revolutionary brigade could continue their assaults on fascists and their funny dialectical arguments. And so that thousands of people throughout the whole metro could breathe, eat, love one another, give life to their children, defecate and sleep, dream, fight, kill, be ravished and betrayed, philosophize and hate, and so that each could believe in his own paradise and his own hell . . . So that life in the metro, senseless and useless, exalted and filled with light, dirty and seething, endlessly diverse, so miraculous and fine could continue.

He was seized by a cheerful sort of desperation. The whole world was against him, everything was going awry. However, the obstacles that the tunnels put in the way of his mission had awoken in Artyom a rage, and this obstinate rage re-lit his weakening vision with a rebellious fire, devouring in him any fear, sense of danger, reason and force.

They're naked, covered in black, glossy skin, with huge eyes and mouths like gashes... they're striding rhythmically ahead, towards the fortifications, towards death, with reckless abandon, without wavering, closer and closer... there are three, five, eight beasts... and the first among them suddenly throws back its head and emits a howl like a requiem.

Do I really deserve this? Artyom thought. Is my life so much more important than the lives of all these people? No, he was glad to have been rescued. But all these people – randomly scattered, like bags and rags, on the granite of the platform, side by side, on the rails, left forever in the poses that Hunter’s bullets had found them in – they all died so that he could live? Hunter had made this exchange with such ease, just as though he had sacrificed some minor chess figures to safeguard one of the most important pieces . . . He was just a player, and the metro was a chessboard, and all the figures were his, because he was playing the game with himself. But here was the question: Was Artyom such an important piece to the game that all these people had to perish for his preservation?

The planet of people lives in three shifts: we’d be too crowded if we all went to sleep in the evening and woke up in the morning at the same time. So a third of us live in the morning, a third of us live in the evening and a third of us live at night. Europe never closes all its eyes.

No era un monstruo. Era un ser humano normal y corriente. Cruel, imbécil y rencoroso. Igual que todos los demás.

Para tratarse de unos revolucionarios, comían sorprendentemente bien.

„Nicht Weisheit und Erfahrung sprachen aus ihm, sondern Alter und Müdigkeit.

„Jeder, der Licht braucht, muss es selbst mitbringen. Und genauso verhält es sich mit der Zeit: Wer Zeit braucht, weil er das Chaos fürchtet, bringt seine Zeit mit

It often happens that an idea that appears in a dream to be a stroke of genius, turns out to be a meaningless jumble of words when one wakes up . . .

ადამიანი ყოველთვის ყველა ცოცხალ არსებაზე უკეთ კლავდა

Die Rettung des Volkes liegt im Wodka.

Cel care are curaj și răbdare să privească toată viața cu atenție întunericul va vedea cel dintâi în el un licăr de lumină.

Wenn niemand da ist, die Zeit abzulesen, bleibt sie stehen.

A stupid indifference about what would happen to him gradually crept up on Artyom. Now he only had an abstract interest in what was surrounding him, as though none of this was happening to him, but he was just reading a book about it. The fate of the main character interested him, of course, but if he was killed then he could just pick another book off the shelf – one with a happy ending.

the metro was not merely a transportation facility, built at a certain point in time, that it was not merely an atomic bomb shelter, or home to some tens of thousands of people . . . Rather, somebody had breathed into it their own, mysterious, incomparable life, and it possessed a certain extraordinary kind of reason, which a human being could not fathom, and a consciousness that was alien to him.

It was true, it was easy enough for an old man like him, with no children, to risk his moth-eaten skin, but the young man still had a long life ahead of him - too long to be concerned about immortality.

Está claro que no me fío de ninguno de los dos. Espero traición. Sin embargo cuento con ellos. Puede ser que esta última noche me dé miedo quedarme completamente solo y cualquier Judas me sirve de amigo.

In Russia they have a strange disease. It makes membrane grow across the sick person's throat, and they start to choke. there's less and less air until they eventually die. They treat it with a strange gizmo, A little silver tube. the membrane can't tolerate silver. The healer inserts the little silver tube in the patient's throat and he breaths through it until it gets over the illness. You're my little silver tube. With you, I have started breathing.

Surrender, Homo sapiens! You are no longer the king of nature! You’ve been dethroned! No, you don’t have to die instantly, nobody will insist on that. Crawl on a little more in agony, choking on your own excrement... But know this, Homo sapiens: you are obsolete!

El tiempo es como el mercurio: aunque intentes dividirlo en partes más pequeñas, se reconstituye al instante, de nuevo entero sin forma. Los hombres lo han domesticado, lo han encadenado a sus relojes y cronómetros, y fluye igual para todos los que lo han encadenado. Pero déjalo libre, y verás.

And the stars! Could anyone who had never seen stars possibly imagine what infinity is, when, most likely, the very concept of infinity first appeared among humans inspired, once upon a time, by the nocturnal vault of the heavens? Millions of shining lights, silver nails driven into a dome of dark blue velvet . .

You know,” says Mr. Schreier, handing me the glass. “Eternal life and immortality are different things, aren’t they? Eternal life here…” – he touches his chest – “… and immortality here…” – he touches his finger to his temple. “Eternal life,” he chuckles, “is included in the basic social benefits package. But immortality is only accessible to the chosen few. And I think… I think you could attain it.” “Attain it? But aren’t I already one of the Immortals?” I joke. “The difference is the same as between a man and an animal.” He suddenly shows me his empty face again. “Obvious to the man and not obvious to the animal.” “You mean I still need to evolve.

Any faith served man only as a crutch supporting him. When Artyom was young, his stepfather’s story about how a monkey took up a cane and became a man made him laugh. After that, apparently, the clever macaque no longer let the cane out of his hand because he couldn’t straighten up. He understood why man needs this support. Without it, life would have become empty, like an abandoned tunnel.

Our bodies are eternal, friction doesn’t wear them out, and we don’t need to make careful decisions about the people on whom we ought to spend our limited resources of youth and beauty. It’s the natural order of things. Ordinary people are created to enjoy pleasure. To take pleasure in the world, food, each other – and for what else? To be happy. And people like me are created to protect their happiness.

Так вот, если их бог и имеет какие-то качества или отличительные свойста - это уж точно не любовь, не справедливость и не всепрощение. Судя по тому, что творилось на земле с момента ее... эээ... сотворения, богу свойственна только одна любовь: он любит интересные истории. Сначала устроит заваруху, а потом смотрит, что из этого выйдет. Если пресновато получается, перцу добавит. Так что прав был старик Шекспир: весь мир - театр. Вот только вовсе не тот, на который он намекал.

You know, when one day’s like any other, they fly by so fast and it seems like the last one is really close already,’ Homer tried to explain. ‘You feel afraid of not getting anything finished. And every one of those days is full of a thousand little things to be done. Do one, take a break, and it’s time to start on the next one. You have no time or strength left for what’s really important. You think: never mind – I’ll start tomorrow. But tomorrow never comes, it’s always just one long, endless today.

а лифт всё тащился – выше, выше… Потом он вздрогнул и встал. Это произошло так неожиданно, что я перепугался: застрять где-то на уровне вершины Джомолунгмы было бы сейчас очень некстати. Попробовал выбраться – дверцы распахнулись; я очутился на забросанной окурками лестничной площадке, выложенной мелкой коричневой плиткой. Передо мной была скучная дверь с приклеенной к ней пластмассовой табличкой – белой с чёрными буквами, из тех, на которых в поликлиниках пишут обычно «Терапевт» или «Окулист». На этой значилось: «БОГ». Я постучал.

Auch wir selbst sind ja nicht das Urbild, nach dem alle folgenden Kopien erstellt werden, sondern nur eine Chimäre, jeweils zur Hälfte bestehend aus inneren und äußeren Merkmalen unserer Väter und Mütter, genauso wie jene ihrerseits aus den Hälften ihrer Eltern bestehen. Gibt es somit in uns gar nichts Einzigartiges, sondern nur eine endlose Mischung winziger Mosaiksteinchen, die unabhängig von uns existieren und sich zu Milliarden zufälliger Bilder zusammensetzen, welche ihrerseits keinen eigenen Wert besitzen und sofort wieder zerfallen?

These were strange, freakish, and dangerous creatures, the likes of which might well have brought Darwin himself to despair with their obvious lack of conformity to the laws of evolutionary development. As much as these beasts might differ from the animals humans were used to, and whether they had been reborn under the invisible and ruinous rays of sunlight, turned from inoffensive representatives of urban fauna into the spawn of hell, or whether they had always dwelled in the depths, only now to be disturbed by man – still, they were an evident part of life on earth.

— Видяхте ли гибелта на този свят? — продължаваше жрецът. — Разбирате ли кой е виновен за нея? Кой знае имената на онези, които с едно натискане на бутона, дори без да виждат това, което правят, са изтривали от лицето на земята стотици хиляди хора? Превръщали са безкрайните зелени гори в изпепелени пустини? Какво направихте с този свят? С моя свят?! Как посмяхте да поемете върху себе си отговорността да го превърнете в нищо? Земята не знае по-голямо зло от вашата адска машинна цивилизация, цивилизацията, противопоставяща неживите механизми на природата! Тя направи всичко възможно да смачка, да изяде и смели света, но се самозабрави и изтреби самата себе си… Вашата цивилизация е раков тумор, тя е огромна амеба, която жадно поглъща всичко, което е полезно и хранително наоколо, и изхвърля само зловонни отровени отпадъци. И сега отново са ви нужни ракети! Нужно ви е най-страшното оръжие, създадено от цивилизация на престъпници! Защо? За да довършите започнатото? За да шантажирате последните оцелели? Да се доберете до властта? Убийци! Ненавиждам ви, ненавиждам ви всичките! — закрещя истерично той, после се закашля и млъкна.

Мне так кажется, что жизнь, конечно, пустая, и смысла в ней в целом нет, и нет судьбы, то есть такой определенной, явной, так чтобы родился – и все, уже знаешь: моя судьба – быть там, космонавтом, или, скажем балериной, или погибнуть во младенчестве, хотя это, конечно, хуже. Нет, не так. Когда живешь сквозь отведенное время… как бы это объяснить… Может случиться, что происходит с тобой какое-то событие, которое заставляет тебя совершать определенные поступки и принимать определенные решения, причем у тебя есть свободный выбор – хочешь, сделай так, хочешь, этак. Но если ты примешь правильное решение, то дальнейшие вещи, которые с тобой будут происходить – это уже будут не просто случайные, как ты выражаешься, события… Они будут обусловлены тем выбором, который ты сделал. Я не имею ввиду, что если ты решил жить на Красной Линии до того, как она стала красной, тебе оттуда уже никуда не деться, и вещи с тобой будут происходить соответствующие, я говорю о более тонких материях. Но в-общем, если ты опять встал на перепутье и опять принял нужное решение, потом перед тобой встанет выбор, который тебе уже не покажется случайным, если ты, конечно, догадаешься и сумеешь осмыслить его. И твоя жизнь перестанет постепенно быть просто набором случайностей, она превратится… в сюжет, что ли, все будет соединено некими логическими, не обязательно прямыми связями, и вот это и будет твоя судьба. На определенной стадии, если ты достаточно далеко зашел по своей стезе, твоя жизнь настолько превращается в сюжет, что с тобой начинают происходить странные, необъяснимые с точки зрения голого рационализма или твоей теории случайных событий вещи. Но зато они будут очень хорошо вписываться в логику сюжетной линии, в которую теперь превратилась твоя жизнь. То есть судьбы просто так не бывает, к ней надо прийти, и если события в твоей жизни соберутся и начнут выстраиваться в сюжет, тогда тебя может забросить в такие дали… Самое интересное, что сам человек может и не подозревать, что с ним это происходит, или представлять себе происходящее в корне неверно, пытаться систематизировать события в соответствии со своим мировоззрением. Но у судьбы – своя логика.

I sada joj je instikt govorio da treba da pronađe čvrst oslonac, uz koji bi se priljubila, zagrlila ga i uplela se oko njega. Ali ne zato da bi parazitirala crpeći sokove tuđeg tela, otimajući mu svetlost i toplotu, već zbog toga što je bez njega bila suviše meka, previše savitljiva, nemoćna da se uspravi, i sama bi zauvek bila osuđena da puzi po zemlji. Otac je učio Sašu da ne treba ni od koga da zavisi, i da ni na koga ne treba da se oslanja. A u stvari, osim njega, na njihovoj maloj postaji i nije imala na koga da se osloni, a on je bio svestan da neće živeti večno. Otac je želeo da ona izraste, ne u bršljan već u moćnu boriku, zaboravljajući da je to u suprotnosti sa ženskom prirodom. Preživela bi Saša bez njega. Preživela bi i bez Hantera. Ali joj je stapanje sa drugim bićem delovalo kao jedini dobar razlog za razmišljanje o budućnosti. Kada ga je na dresini u pokretu obgrlila rukama, učinilo joj se da je njen život dobio novi oslonac. Ona je odlično znala da je verovati drugima opasno, a da je zavisiti od njih - nedostojno, tako da je u svom pokušaju da sebe objasni Hanteru u stvari zgazila samu sebe. Saša je želela da dopre do njega, a on je smatrao da mu se ona lepi za čizme. Ostavljena bez oslonca i zgažena, nije imala nameru da tako ponižena nastavi potragu. On ju je prognao na površinu - to mu tako nekako dođe. Ako joj se nešto dogodi na površini, to će biti njegova krivica; ali on je isto tako u stanju i da to spreči.

Disfigured, perverted - but a part of life here all the same. And they remained subject to that very same driving impulse known to every organic thing on this planet. Survive. Survive at any cost.

Their main weapon is horror. The people are barely maintaining their positions. People are sleeping with machine guns, with uzis - and they’re coming at us unarmed

Everyone knows that death is unavoidable. Death was a part of daily life in the metro. But it always seemed that nothing unfortunate would happen to you, that the bullets would fly past you, the disease would skip over you. Death of old age was a slow affair so you needn’t think about it. You can’t live in constant awareness of your mortality. You had to forget about it, and though these thoughts came to you anyway, you had to drive them away, to smother them, otherwise they could take root in your consciousness and they would make your life a misery. You can’t think about the fact that you’ll die. Otherwise you might go mad. There’s only one thing that can save a man from madness and that’s uncertainty. The life of someone who has been sentenced to death is different from the life of a normal person in only one way: the one knows exactly when he will die, and the regular person is in the dark about it, and consequently it seems he can live forever, even though it’s entirely possible that he could be killed in a catastrophic event the following day. Death isn’t frightening by itself. What’s frightening is expecting it.

But what was a starry sky for a child who wasn’t even capable of imagining that a ceiling might not be above his head?

Fear and terror are not the same thing at all. Fear spurs a man on to take action and be creative. Terror paralyses the body and blocks the flow of thought, it makes a man less human.

He was dreaming of immortalising everyone that life and fate brought him into contact with, but instead he had been appointed an absurd, bald, powerless angel of death. His wings had been clipped and he had been ringed, setting him a fixed term of thirty days, and that had galvanised him into action.

You mean beauty doesn’t exist without people?’ Sasha asked eventually, puzzled. ‘Probably not,’ he replied absentmindedly. ‘If there’s no one to see it . . . After all, animals aren’t capable, are they?’ ‘And if animals are different from people because they can’t see the difference between what’s beautiful and what’s ugly,’ Sasha pondered, ‘does that mean people can’t exist without beauty either?’ ‘Oh, yes they can,’ said the old man, shaking his head. ‘Lots of people don’t need it at all.

Myślę, że kiedy oddychasz śmiercią, nikt nie dotknie twoich ust. Przestraszą się trupiego smrodu...

Bazı şeyler vardır ki, yapmak istemezsin, bir daha yapmamaya yemin edersin, kendine yasaklarsın ama sonra her şey kendiliğinden oluverir. Üzerinde daha fazla düşünmeyi beceremezsin, düşünme merkezin iyice boşalmıştır, geriye sadece kendini hayretle izlemek kalır, olanlarda hiç suçun olmadığına inanmışsındır ve sonra her şey kendiliğinden olur.

При тях има хомосексуалисти в правителството, а у нас - педерасти.(...) Кое е по-добре?

Ten, któremu starczy odwagi i wytrwałości, by przez całe życie wpatrywać się w mrok, pierwszy dojrzy w nim przebłysk światła.

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I think fate doesn't just happen, you need to arrive at it.

De sens, mon frère, à cette vie, il n’y en a qu’un : faire des enfants et les élever. Et qu’ils se débrouillent eux-mêmes avec cette question. Qu’ils y trouvent la réponse qu’ils peuvent. C’est ça qui fait tourner le monde.

In some miraculous fashion, the only things that were preserved were those capable of capturing the human imagination, setting the heart beating faster and engaging people's minds and feelings. The gripping story of a great hero and his love could outlive the story of an entire civilization, infecting the human brain like a virus that was transmitted from fathers to children over hundreds of generations.

Sintió como una frialdad en la mejilla, en el lugar donde el aliento del túnel acariciaba el rastro de una lágrima. Movió la cabeza de un lado para otro, igual que lo había hecho el bárbaro muerto. Luego empezó a helarse, fuera por el gélido viento que arrastraba el holor de la humedad y la desolación, fuera porque la soledad y el vacío le habían llegado hasta lo más hondo. Por un instante creyó que todo lo que existía en el mundo había perdido todo su sentido: su misión, los intentos de los hombres por sobrevivir en un mundo transformado, y, sobre todo, la vida en todas sus formas. En todo ello no había nada, tan sólo el túnel vacío y oscuro del tiempo que sobrevívia a todo. Todo ser humano tenía que andar a tientas por ese túnel, desde la estación Nacimiento hasta la estación Muerte. Quien buscara la fe, buscaba en corredores laterales en ese túnel. Pero lo único que existía eran esas dos estaciones, y el túnel se había construido sólo para unirlas...

Sin pensar en lo que hacía, Artyom se quitó la mochila y la dejó sobre el suelo. Hay cosas que uno no quiere hacer, que ha jurado no hacer jamás, que uno se prohíbe a sí mismo, pero que, de todos modos, acaban por hacerse. Llega el momento en el que es imposible reflexionar, en el que los centros del pensamiento no reaccionan, y lo único que queda por hacer es observarse a uno mismo, atónito, porque se está haciendo algo de lo que uno mismo no tiene ninguna culpa, porque son cosas que ocurren por sí mismas.

Las haciendas mueren, los linajes mueren, / y tú, igual que ellos, vas a morir; / yo sólo conozco una cosa que viva por siempre: / la fama que por sus hechos deja el muerto.

У людей сознание, к сожалению, как у аквариумных рыбок - 10 секунд. После того, как они посмотрели передачу, они испытывают эмоцию, которая у них заложена телевизионным эфиром. А отпустило, рассказали про Донбасс - люди по поводу Донбасс переживают. Показали сериал - по поводу сериала тогда. — Глуховский о Путине и России.

Znasz przypowieść o żabie w śmietanie? Jak dwie żaby wpadły do dzbanka ze śmietaną? Jedna, myśląc racjonalnie, szybko zrozumiała, że opór jest bezcelowy i że losu nie da się oszukać. A może jest jakieś życie pozagrobowe, więc po co się niepotrzebnie wysilać i na próżno pocieszać płonnymi nadziejami? Złożyła łapki i poszła na dno. A druga była na pewno durna, albo niewierząca. I zaczęła się szamotać. Wydawałoby się, po co się szarpać, jeśli wszystko przesądzone? Szamotała się i szamotała... Aż ubiła śmietanę na masło. I wylazła z dzbanka. Uczcijmy pamięć jej towarzyszki, przedwcześnie poległej w imię postępu filozofii i racjonalnego myślenia.

One day this station will burn to the ground,’ Artyom thought aloud, looking despondently at the hall. ‘In four hundred and twenty days,’ his companion said calmly.

Jak by powiedział Puszkin, służba muzom nie znosi pośpiechu.

Każdy stalker był człowiekiem legendą, półbogiem, na którego wszyscy – od małych po wielkich – patrzyli w zachwycie. Kiedy dzieci rodzą się w świecie, w którym nie ma już dokąd i po co latać i żeglować, a słowa „lotnik” i „marynarz” zacierają się i stopniowo tracą swój sens, dzieci te chcą zostać stalkerami.

Stalker. Dokładnie tak ich sobie wyobrażał – z opowiadań ojczyma i historyjek straganiarzy. Poplamiony i miejscami osmalony skafander ochronny, długa ciężka kamizelka kuloodporna, potężne bary, na prawym ramieniu niedbale zarzucona potężna bryła erkaemu, z lewej, na podobieństwo bandoletu, zwisa pobłyskująca smarem taśma z nabojami. Masywne sznurowane buty, wpuszczone do środka spodnie, na plecach przepastny płócienny plecak. Stalker zdjął okrągły hełm specnazu, ściągnął gumową maskę przeciwgazową i, zaczerwieniony, mokry, rozmawiał o czymś z dowódcą posterunku.

So it turns out that we emerge into an antiquated FUTURE from a spaceship that never took off for the distant stars. And it was right not to, by the way. We’ve got no fucking business out there. But what we see in front of us is the present.

Men retreated from the heavens – but not for long. Before God could even blink, He had to squeeze up, and then He was evicted. Now Europe’s covered right across with Towers of Babel, and these days it’s not a matter of pride – it’s just that there’s no more living space left.

In order to force it down, I cut myself a piece of meat. It’s already cold. It’s too tough for my taste, on the dry side. The beef that I eat usually melts in my mouth. But this roast has to be chewed, as if it actually used to be an animal’s muscles. Damn, what if it really is genuine?

I too should have been born a carefree idler in this garden of paradise and taken the bright sunshine for granted, I should never have seen walls or been afraid of them, but lived at liberty, breathing deeply and freely! But instead… I made just one solitary mistake – I came out of the wrong mother: and now I’ve got to pay for that for the rest of my endless life.

Christ’s painted blood seeps out of the wounds for which he himself is to blame, which he didn’t try to avoid, the great self-harmer. He himself inflicted them with others’ hands, to drive us all into debt. He paid in advance for our sins, the ones we hadn’t committed. He forced a thousand generations of people to be born guilty and pay him back with interest all their lives for this enforced loan. Thank you.

And instantly the pale Apollo faces fall away from the human ones. For a brief moment I see before me not an ancient Attic army, not a reincarnated phalanx from the time of Alexander the Great, but a red-faced, agitated crowd – the same as the one that is rampaging down below us. And then, replacing those abstract, beautiful, marble masks, they all tug on alien, black ones – with mirror windows instead of eyes and filter canisters instead of mouths.

Father André turns cherry-red, I’ve socked him below the belt, but he handles it and holds up, speaking in a quiet, confident voice. “I didn’t choose this. He created me this way. He made me as a homosexual.” “What for? Was he feeling bored?” “So that I would come to Him. So that I would serve Him.” “Why, you don’t even have any right to serve! You’re a sinner! Your god created you a sinner! What for?” “So that I would always be guilty. Always guilty, no matter what I did.” “Wonderful!

„»Und wie gefällt dir dein Leben ohne Sinn?« »Wie, ohne Sinn? Mein Leben hat sehr wohl einen Sinn, den gleichen wie für alle anderen. Diese ganze Sinnsuche haben die meisten Leute doch mit der Pubertät überwunden. Bei dir scheint das offenbar etwas länger zu dauern

„»Allein heute Morgen«, bemerkte Sergej Andrejewitsch, »hast du dir mit deinen Reden schon wieder ein paar Jahrhunderte Hölle verdient.« »Dann hast du wenigstens jemanden, mit dem du dich unterhalten kannst.«