Evil has no need to bother with eliminating Good. It's far simpler to let Good fight against itself.
That's the way it goes sometimes: in order to help your friends, first you have to help your enemy. Better get used to it.
When there are strange things going on all around, every coincidence should be considered very carefully.
Why was is that the Light acted through lies, and the Darkness acted though the truth? Why was is that our truth proved powerless, but lies were effective? And why was the Darkness able to manage perfectly well with truth in order to do Evil?
I believe it, she's a very good person, kind. There's weariness there, but no bitterness or spite. When you're with a girl like that you feel like a different person. You try to be better, and that's a strain. Men prefer to be friends with her kind, flirt a bit, share confidences. They don't often fall in love with girls like that, but everybody loves them.
I get the same buzz cleaning up the yard as Leo Tolstoy did from scything hay.
I suppose that literature as it is won't die, science fiction included. But games are becoming an extremely important part of the science fiction world, including games that are adapted from books (or vice versa: books that are adapted from games). It's wonderful to have the opportunity to play and see your favorite characters on the screen, but the opportunity to read a book does not become less attractive.
One day you will hear the sound of time rustling as it slips through your fingers like sand. Remember me then. I wish you luck.
Experience is primarily the ability to restrain our fleeting impulses.
That's how myths are born. Out of our carelessness, out of our tattered nerves, out of jokes that go wrong and flashy gestures.
Above all, translators must be native speakers. It’s not because they speak the language better – I understand that sometimes a foreigner can learn a language better than native speakers. It has more to do with intimate knowledge of the society for which the book is being translated.
Indeed, being a beginner is very difficult right now. Book publishers are in a crisis, sales are dwindling, and publishing houses are losing money, doing their best to survive. It's a sign of the times, the emergence of new kinds of entertainment -- there's nothing we can do about it. I don't think books will perish for good. They could become less widespread, though, falling even further behind movies and computer games. But we shouldn't be afraid of this, because books will always remain the entertainment of choice for intelligent people, of whom there are still many in this world.
When people got old, why did they always develop a passion for scrabbling in the earth? Were they trying to get used to it?
Love is happiness, but only when you believe it will last forever. Even though every time it turns out to be a lie, it’s only faith that gives love its strength and its joy.
All we can do is try not to fall.
This is the inevitable consequence of a popular movie: you become the guy who wrote "the book that inspired the movie." Frankly speaking, I find it a bit insulting.
Nobody can be forced to commit an act of villainy. You can't push anybody into the mud; people always step into it themselves.
That's the hardest thing of all--never to become cynical, never to lose faith, never to become indifferent.
There is no abstract Evil; you have to understand that! Its roots are here, all around us, in this herd that goes on chewing and having a good time only an hour after a murder!
I often use detective elements in my books. I love detective novels. But I also think science fiction and detective stories are very close and friendly genres, which shows in the books by Isaac Asimov, John Brunner, and Glen Cook. However, whilst even a tiny drop of science fiction may harm a detective story, a little detective element benefits science fiction. Such a strange puzzle.
If you have love in you, it's a strength. But if you are in love, it's a weakness.
Love is a great power, and such a strange power.
Of course we got drunk!" Semyon said. "It's okay to get drunk, Anton. If you need to real bad. Only you have to get drunk on vodka. Cognac and wine—that's all for the heart." "So what's vodka for?" "For the soul. If it's hurting real bad
I am fat, lazy and kind.
But even if we were to disappear, people would still be divided into people and Others. No matter how those Others were different.People can't get by without Others. Put two people on an uninhabited island, and you'll have a human being and an Other. And the difference is that an Other is always tormented by his differentness. It's easier for people. They know they're people, and that's what they ought to be. And they all have no choice but to be that way. All of them, forever.
We're not given the chance to choose absolute truth. Truth's always two-faced. The only thing we have is the right to reject the lie we find most repugnant.
Love was something different. Love was pure delight, a fountain of emotions, sensual delights, and enjoying spending time together.
A car's not the right place for showing off to a girl—the bed's the place for that. The consequences of a mistake there are more upsetting, but less tragic.
The hardest thing of all is when pain is hidden behind a mask of calm.
It's great to be excited by your profession, whether you are a doctor or a writer. I started writing books when I was in medical school and, by the time I graduated, I realized that writing was more exciting to me than being a doctor. And if I tried to be a doctor and a writer, then both would suffer.
When people love each other, when they find each other out of thousands and millions of people. It's always destiny.
Many years ago someone told me something that I flatly refused to accept. And I still don't accept it now, despite all the times I've seen it proved right. "The common good and the individual good rarely coincide..." Sure, I know, it's true. But some truths are probably worse than lies.
What was my truth worth, if I was prepared to defend the entire world, but not those who were close to me? If I subdued hate, but wouldn't give love a chance?
This was how you wound up in the Inquisition. When you stopped being able to see any difference between Light Ones and Dark Ones. When for you, people weren't even a flock of sheep, but just a handful of spiders in a glass jar. When you stopped believing in the future, and all you wanted to do was preserve the status quo. For yourself. For those few individuals who were still dear to you.
It is boring to haunt a writer, and even more so to haunt a celebrity. I would haunt a literary figure! Possibly some superhero, maybe even James Bond. Constant adventures, fights, beautiful women--much more interesting that watching a writer who taps on computer all day long, or a celebrity posing in front of cameras.
Czech beer in bottles is the corpse of real beer in a glass coffin.
A writer who wants to be translated and published abroad faces a very difficult challenge: first of all, he must make sure that his book is cosmopolitan in the best sense of the word, that it is interesting to a global audience. Nobody is going to read about problems that they don’t care about.
An assassin can be found for every president. And for every prophet there are a thousand interpreters to distort the essence of the religion, to replace the bright flame with the heat of the inquisitors' pyres. The time came when every book was cast into the fire, when every symphony was reduced to a popular tune and played in all the drinking dens. A sound philosophical basis could be set in place under any vile nonsense.
We are our own gods and our own demons.
There is no abstract Evil; you have to understand that! Its roots are here, all around us, in this herd that goes on chewing and having a good time only an hour after a murder! That's what you have to fight for. For people. Evil is a hydra with many heads, and the more of them you cut off, the more it grows! Hydras have to be starved to death, do you understand that? Kill a hundred Dark Ones, and a thousand more will take their place.
Drinking beer in a children's playground is an old Soviet tradition.
You're a big boy, you ought to understand that punctual transport, public order and safe streets, polite people and good medical services are all the achievements of dictatorship.
And the simple people are trash. A herd of sheep that are good for shearing, but sometimes it's more profitable to slaughter them.
Great knowledge brings great sorrow.
What an unfortunate instrument the guitar is! An instrument of such great nobility, a genuine monarch of music-- reduced to a pitiful lump of wood with six strings, constantly abused by people with no ear and no voice.
What if it turns out there really are witches and vampires and werewolves living right here alongside us? After all, what better disguise could there be than to get your image enshrined in the culture of the mass media? Anything that's described in artistic terms and shown in the movies stops being frightening and mysterious. For real horror you need the spoken word, you need an old grandpa sitting on a bench, scaring the grandkids in the evening.
If it's possible to do something, sooner or later someone's going to do it.
There is very much in the world that is bad. But usually the attempt to defeat evil engenders more evil. I advise you to do good; that is the only way to win the victory.
At home the very walls lend you strength.
Because love is also a power. A great power, and it should not be disdained.
Because love stands above Darkness and Light.Because love is not sex or a shared faith, or "the joint maintenance of a household and the upbringing of children."Because love is also Power.And Light and Darkness, people and Others, morality and law, the Ten Commandments and the Great Treaty have damn all to do with it.
Ill-considered but well-intentioned actions do more good that actions that are well-considered but cruel.
The only thing that restrains you is fear, Anton Gorodetsky. For yourself, or for people - that's not important. But we are restrained by horror. And that is why we observe the Treaty.
An introverted, bookish child, with a mass of complexes and her head full of crazy ideals and a childish faith in the beautiful prince who was searching for and would surely find her.
Generally speaking, we can and should say everything. We just have to choose the right time, otherwise the truth can be worse than a lie.
If age teaches you anything, then one of its lessons is certainly not to hurry if you're already late.
For every prophet there are a thousand interpreters to distort the essence of the religion, to replace the bright flame with the heat of the inquisitors' pyres.
Being on the side of the Light is much tougher than being on the side of the Dark.
How easily the truth is lost, and how persistent lies are.
There are far more reasons for death than there are for life.
Forgiving was the hardest thing. Sometimes forgiving was the hardest thing in the whole world.
Drink your coffee, it clears out the brain in the morning
Loneliness, dejection, the contempt or pity of people around you--these are unpleasant feelings. But they are precisely the things that produce genuine Dark Ones.
Life consists of nothing but exceptions.
Fairy tales lie just as much as statistics do, but sometimes you can find a grain of truth in them.
The common good and the individual good rarely coincide.
When leaders betray their people and the people don't overthrow them, it's not just the leaders who should be blamed.
