Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky Quotes & Sayings

Quantin crept closer to the knoll. A pungent smell passed through his nostrils up into his brain. Attracted by the poppies' scarlet smears, he was about to take another step when he felt a hand on his elbow. A man in a poppy-red jacket, his pupils dilated, smiled warningly.
"No strangers allowed. Go away."
"I don't understand ... "
"Understanding is strictly forbidden. Even dreams have the right to dream. Isn't that so? Now go away. — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

In short, you had that particular ability which I never had: the ability to be alive. — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

A dingily bilious sun was seeping through a tent of black clouds. Passersby, spitefully elbowing elbows, were rushing along the pavement. People thronging the doorways of shops tried to pummel their way through and stuck fast, their faces flushed with spite and fury, their teeth bared. — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

People are ignorant of what any street clock knows. Why? Because the crack that cleaves existence also swallows their existence-reflecting consciousnesses. Thrown back into existence, the poor souls don't suspect that a moment ago they didn't exist - and only isolated things and persons, swallowed by the crack never to return to this world, arouse a certain fear and foreboding. — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

Why frighten little children with the dark when one can quiet them with it and lead them into dreams? — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

I looked up. From the pediment of an old brick church, a gigantic eye painted into a triangle was staring straight at me through the mist. — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

The outside world is just a bad habit of the so-called nervous system. — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

In a certain present there is more of the future than in the future itself. — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

Muscovites see clearly but write muddily; the eye grasps but the fingers splay. — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

Hiding my half existence behind the opaque walls of my skull, concealing it like a shameful disease, I did not consider the simple fact that the same thing could be occurring under other skullcaps, in other locked rooms. — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

As I was sifting through a heap of old and new "identity cards," I noticed that something was missing: my identity. — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

Writers, in essence, are professional word tamers; if the words walking down the lines were living creatures, they would surely fear and hate the pen's nib as tamed animals do the raised whip. — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

Understanding is strictly forbidden. Even dreams have the right to dream. — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

Oh no.' Straight raised his eyes to me, and a slight smile touched the corners of his lips. 'A philosophy of life is more terrible than syphilis and people - you have to give them credit - take every precaution not to become infected. Especially by a philosophy of life. — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

But it's fair to say that the war's [WWI] dialectic forced those who were more or less alive to go to their death, and gave those who were more or less dead the right to live. And if the war managed only to separate the living from the dead, then the new regime, arriving in its wake, would sooner or later pit them against each other as enemies. — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

At the time I ... loved someone. Now I wouldn't know how. — Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky