YEVGENY ZAMYATIN QUOTES
Russian author (1884-1937)
To an artist, creating an image means being in love with it.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
The Psychology of Creative Work
Every genuine poet is necessarily a Columbus. America existed for centuries before Columbus but it was only Columbus who was able to track it down.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
Let the answers be wrong, let the philosophy be mistaken -- errors are more valuable than truths: truth is of the machine, error is alive; truth reassures, error disturbs.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters
Ever since he repented of religion and shaved off his clerical beard and mustache, he has had the constant feeling that he has taken off his trousers, and that his nose protrudes altogether indecently and must at all cost be covered.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
"X", The Dragon: Fifteen Stories
An error is more useful than truth: truth is a thought suffering from arteriosclerosis.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
The Future of the Theater
All of life in its complexity and beauty is forever minted in the gold of words.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
Knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
All truths are erroneous. This is the very essence of the dialectical process: today's truths become errors tomorrow; there is no final number.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters
Life itself today has lost its plane reality: it is projected, not along the old fixed points, but along the dynamic coordinates of Einstein, of revolution. In this new projection, the best-known formulas and objects become displaced, fantastic, familiar-unfamiliar. This is why it is so logical for literature today to be drawn to the fantastic plot, or to an amalgam of reality and fantasy.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
The New Russian Prose
Isn't it clear that bliss and envy--they are the numerator and the denominator of the fraction known as happiness.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
We have long become overgrown with calluses; we no longer hear people being killed.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
The Dragon: Fifteen Stories
It is an error to divide people into the living and the dead: there are people who are dead-alive, and people who are alive-alive. The dead-alive also write, walk, speak, act. But they make no mistakes; only machines make no mistakes, and they produce only dead things. The alive-alive are constantly in error, in search, in questions, in torment.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
A Soviet Heretic
It has never occurred to me before, but this is truly how it is: all of us on earth walk constantly over a seething, scarlet sea of flame, hidden below, in the belly of the earth. We never think of it. But what if the thin crust under our feet should turn into glass and we should suddenly see?
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
And everyone must lose his mind, everyone must! The sooner the better! It is essential -- I know it.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
Who knows who you are ... A person is a novel: you don't know how it will end until the very last page. Otherwise it wouldn't be worth reading to the very end.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
Crossing out is an art that is, perhaps, even more difficult than writing. It requires the sharpest eye to decide what is superfluous and must be removed. And it requires ruthlessness toward yourself -- the greatest ruthlessness and self-sacrifice. You must know how to sacrifice parts in the name of the whole.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
Theme and Plot
True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
"I Am Afraid", A Soviet Heretic
The speed of her tongue is not correctly calculated; the speed per second of her tongue should be slightly less than the speed per second of her thoughts--at any rate not the reverse.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
We
I prefer being wrong in my own way to being right in someone else's.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
attributed, Contemporary Russian Literature
The sole means of ridding man of crime is to rid him of freedom.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
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