Ludmilla Petrushevskaya Quotes

It's no secret, of course, that souls sometimes die within a person and are replaced by others — especially with age.

There was nothing but pain in store for her, yet she cried with happiness and couldn’t stop.

She keeps looking up, not meeting his eyes - the sign of a serious crush, by the way.

Once, at the dacha, years ago,” she said, “we all decided to go mushroom picking, and our neighbor Vera—she was at least eighty at the time—dashed over to the mirror and started painting her lips. My mother said to her, ‘Aunt Vera, we are going to the woods; who’s the lipstick for?’ And Vera replied—I’ll never forget it—‘Who knows? Maybe that’s where it will happen!

To cheat fate, Victor signed a three-year contract at a big industrial site two thousand miles away. He reckoned that in three years they’d all forget about him, including Alla, who’d find herself a husband. It was like a temporary suicide, he thought, a thing that everyone desires at some point—to step out for a while, then come back to see what happened.

There’s no such refuge for anyone on earth,” Baba Anya said. “Every soul is its own last refuge.

Old Milgrom pauses to console the girl and tells her she’s not the only one who’s clumsy, that she herself couldn’t do anything when she was young—boil an egg or hem a diaper—and then she learned. Life taught her.

The piano—that, too, was an adventure. A little girl tried to learn to play it. Her mother insisted, forced her to sit there and practice. Nothing came of it; stubbornness won out in the end, the stubbornness that protects us from the will of others, that defends our right to live our life the way we want. Even if it means life will turn out worse than anyone planned, will turn into a poor life—but it'll be one's own, however it is, even without music, even without talent.

On the night she died and they took her away, her husband collapsed, and in his sleep he heard her—she was there, and she lay her head down on the pillow next to him and said, “My love.” And after that he slept happily, and at the funeral he was calm and dignified, though he’d lost a great deal of weight, and was honest and upright, and at the wake, when everyone had gathered at his apartment, he told them all that she had come to him and called him “My love.” And everyone froze, because they knew what he said was true—and the photograph no longer hung over his desk.

Love likes secrecy and playfulness; it flees too much devotion and heavy emotional debt.

THERE ONCE LIVED A GIRL WHO WAS KILLED, THEN BROUGHT back to life.

Never have I been frightened by circumstances. A little warmth, a little bread, my little ones with me, and life begins, happiness begins.

Because by now she’d begun to forget that inside of her were two souls, and these souls kept quiet and cried without tears in the dark prison of her powerful body.

hoping not to meet anyone at all anymore, in this kingdom of the dead, and hoping never to learn just how much they grieved in that other kingdom, of the living.

certain feelings of Platonic Friendship and Sympathy, which are much more dangerous than our plain human filth, in and out, in and out, and it’s over.

She gave the impression that she didn’t even understand why concealment might sometimes be necessary, why there are certain things you tell only your nearest and dearest—and even then regret telling afterwards.

I never "toured" that courtyard again. We avoid places where we've endured pain, but the opposite is true, too. Extreme kindness can be repaid only with ingratitude. What if the miracle won't repeat itself and life's greatest consolation-remembering the kindness shown to us-disappears? Those little faces won't be there, and the green sweater won't be offered. This way, they are always with me. The crown of hungry children, the dark stairs, the open door, the outstretched hand, and someone's mother, crying, her face invisible against the light.

By now it was clear that her Droplet was gone. She’d been replaced by this enormous, ugly, clumsy thing with its big head and skinny arms—a real baby, and not at all hers. The

El que ha de fer un autor no és tendir a comunicar uns sentiments, sinó sentir que el posseeixen, sentir el desig de desfer-se’n, escriure i alliberar-se’n. Aleshores, potser les idees i els sentiments se sedimentaran en el text, i tornaran a sorgir quan uns altres ulls comprensius s’aferrin a les mateixes línies.

En el seu cas, tot quedava clar, el promès era transparent, ximple i gens subtil, i a ella l'esperava un destí tèrbol, però tenia els ulls plens de llàgrimes de felicitat.

A home for her, I told her calmly, should come from the dick that knocked her up and then skipped off because no one can stand her two days in a row. She grabbed the tablecloth and threw it at me, but there was nothing on the table, and a tablecloth cannot kill anyone.

The task of literature, it seems, is precisely to present, as people worthy of respect and pity, all those who in life are commonly despised. Thus authors adopt a rather lofty position in relation to the rest of the world, taking upon themselves the role of sole defenders of the aforesaid despised, assuming the role of judges, defence, and prosecution rolled into one, and undertaking the hard task of educating the masses and purveying great ideas.

He removed a chair blocking the way and entered a room filled with broken glass, rubbish, excrement, pages torn out of books, strewn bottles, and headless mice. A little girl with a bright-red bald scalp, just like the young man’s, only redder, lay on the bed. She stared at the young man, and the cat sat beside her on her pillow, also staring attentively at him, with big, round eyes.

There once lived a girl who was killed,