Vasily Grossman Quotes

Ivan tells Anna: "I used to imagine that being embraced by a woman . . . as something so wonderful t...

The longer a nation's history, the more wars, invasions, wanderings, and periods of captivity it has...

What constitutes the character of a nation is the character of many individual human beings; every n...

What matters is the need to move from the rigidity of national stereotypes towards something more tr...

The true champions of a nation's freedom are those who reject the limitations of stereotypes and aff...

There are one or two people - I’m not talking about family, about Zhenya or your mother - whom a par...

There is a deep and undeniable sadness in all this: whenever we see the dawn of an eternal good that...

A mountain had died, its skeleton had been scattered over the ground. Time had aged the mountain; ti...

Communication between people of different nationalities enriches human society and makes it more col...

The nationalism of a small nation can, with treacherous ease, become detached from its roots in what...

I used to think freedom was freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of conscience. But free...

The century of Einstein and Planck was also the century of Hitler. The Gestapo and the scientific re...

I don't want you to be young and beautiful. I only want one thing. I want you to be kind-hearted - a...

When you think about new-born babies being killed in our own lifetime,' he said, 'all the efforts of...

Human groupings have one main purpose: to assert everyone’s right to be different, to be special, to...

When you were a child, you used to run to me for protection. Now, in moments of weakness, I want to ...

Bach felt the beauty and sadness of the moment. These men who defied the power of the Russian heavy ...

Sofya now understood the difference between life and existence: her life had come to an end, but her...

A wife! No one else could love a man who had been trampled on by iron feet. She would wash his feet ...

Another fact that allowed Fascism to gain power over men was their blindness. A man cannot believe t...

When a person dies, they cross over from the realm of freedom to the realm of slavery. Life is freed...

I don't want to be told that it's the people with power over us who are guilty, that we're innocent ...

Before the war Sofya Levinton had once said to Yevgenia Nikolaevna Shaposhnikova, 'If one man is fat...

And here she was, an old woman now, living and hoping, keeping faith, afraid of evil, full of anxiet...

Why had he committed this terrible sin? Everything in the world was insignificant compared to what h...

Man’s innate yearning for freedom can be suppressed but never destroyed. Totalitarianism cannot reno...

In great hearts the cruelty of life gives birth to good.

The snow filled the air with a soft grey-blue mist, softening the wind and gunfire, bringing the ear...

Good is to be found neither in the sermons of religious teachers and prophets, nor in the teachings ...

This kindness, this stupid kindness, is what is most truly human in a human being. It is what sets m...

To Polyakov it was as though a fierce wind from downstream was sweeping up the Volga. Several times ...

My faith has been tempered in Hell. My faith has emerged from the flames of the crematoria, from the...

There are people whose souls have just withered, people who are willing to go along with anything ev...

There's nothing more difficult than saying goodbye to a house where you've suffered.

They soon lost interest in Sofya. She was just one more prisoner -with no more idea of her destinati...

He sensed Death with a depth and clarity of which only small children or great philosophers are capa...

At the same time there was the good of the poor and the good of the rich. And the good of the whites...

And it was not merely tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, but hundreds of millions of peopl...

Both his voice and eyes had the burning cold of alcohol. His strength no longer lay in his military ...

The hide was being flayed off the still living body of the Revolution so that a new age could slip i...

Why do people have memories? It would be easier to die - anything to stop remembering.

Jenny lacked any sense of property - she was constantly apologising to Yevgenia and asking for her p...

The people in the hospital had been struck by her calm and the number of questions she had asked. Th...