Mikhail Shishkin Quotes & Sayings

If beauty and love do not suit the times, then you have to be beautiful and to love to spite the times! — Mikhail Shishkin

The war is going on, and I'm singing. But I can't bandage up the wounded like Tala. I can, of course. But so can hundreds of other young women. Let the daring and decisive ones do it, not those like me. No, I'm daring and decisive, too. And I want to sing. It's not my fault that my youth came in time of war! I won't get another youth! And I'm convinced that singing when all around is hatred and death is no less important. Maybe even more important.

This is what I believe: If somewhere on earth the wounded are finished off with rifle butts, that means somewhere else people have to be singing and rejoicing in life! The more death there is around, the more important to counter it with life, love, and beauty! — Mikhail Shishkin

You know, the only important thing is that there was a person for whom you were the most important being in the world. Everything else is inconsequential. — Mikhail Shishkin

The more of myself I transferred into words, the more obvious it became that words were powerless to express anything. Or, rather, it's like this - words can create something of their own, but you can't become words. Words are cheats. They promise to carry you off on the voyage into eternity, and then they set out in secret under full sail, stranding you on the shoreline.

But the most important point is that reality doesn't fit into any words. Reality strikes you dumb. Everything important that happens in life is beyond words. There comes a point when you understand that if what you have experienced can be expressed in words, it means you haven't experienced anything. — Mikhail Shishkin

Everyone's afraid, but I'm not. Because I loved your father my whole life. I still do. — Mikhail Shishkin

As the years go by, taking genuine delight in something becomes possible only when you can share that delight with somebody else. — Mikhail Shishkin

A foreign country remains foreign until you find people near and dear to you there. — Mikhail Shishkin

Love is like the moon: if it's not waxing, it's waning, but it's the same as the last time, always the same. — Mikhail Shishkin

My handsome, intelligent, inimitable, delightful, prickly, unlucky Alexei Pavlovich, by the power of imagination invested in me I'll make you who you are because I want to. — Mikhail Shishkin

Having your loved ones near you is the only important thing, and everything else has little meaning. — Mikhail Shishkin

If God gave each person his own life, then He will give each person his own special resurrection. If God performed one miracle and gave me this rushed, elusive life, then he will think up a way to give me another that lasts. And there will be this Easter night there, too. And today's evening after the rain. — Mikhail Shishkin

People rarely die from love, but they are frequently born from it. — Mikhail Shishkin

You have to arrive at unbelief yourself, and Russians get their unbelief for free, therefore they don't value it, they value faith. — Mikhail Shishkin

Whoever can be happy right now, should. — Mikhail Shishkin

Resurrection of the flesh. Out of nothingness, out of the void, out of white plaster, out of a dense fog, out of a snowy field, out of a sheet of paper there suddenly will appear people, living bodies, they rise up to remain forever, because they can't vanish, disappearing is simply not an option; death has already come and gone. First the contour, outlines, edges. Period, period, comma makes a crooked little face. Cross-out. The man stretches from this crack in the wall to that spot of sun. Stretches from nail to nail. — Mikhail Shishkin

Everything has its price: sorrow for happiness; birth for love; death for birth. — Mikhail Shishkin

The stories told, the words, create their own reality. The details are important. Words create realities and decide destinies.

Unidentified writers, under four evangelical pseudonyms, wrote a book that made the world what it is today. Their words created the very reality in which we have been living for two thousand years; the words simply had to be worthy of faith. Had it not been for the detail about the baked fish he ate after going hungry after he died on the cross, and the finger stuck into the wound, the world would not be Christian and would not be awaiting resurrection. The word becomes the reality, a reality of which we ourselves are merely a part. — Mikhail Shishkin

Since everyone can't be happy anyway, whoever can be happy right now, should. You have to be happy today, right now, no matter what. Someone said there can't be a heaven if there's a hell. Supposedly it's impossible to be in heaven if you know suffering exists somewhere. Nonsense. True enjoyment of life can only be felt if you've known suffering. — Mikhail Shishkin

All the rest, besides my loving and being loved, has no importance whatsoever. — Mikhail Shishkin

There's a threshold of pain, a person loses consciousness in order not to die. And there's a threshold of grief, it suddenly stops hurting. And you feel nothing. Nothing at all. — Mikhail Shishkin