Aitmatov Chingiz Quotes & Sayings

There will be winter, there will be cold, there will be snowstorms, but then there will be spring.. Agian.. — Chingiz Aitmatov

The only thing I'll never have is what I have lost for ever and ever ... As long as I live, until I draw my last breath, I shall remember Asel and all those beautiful things that were ours. The day I was to leave I went to the lake and stood on the rise above it. I was saying good-bye to the Tien Shan mountains, to Issyk-Kul. Good-bye, Issyk-Kul, my unfinished song! How I wish I could take you with me, your blue waters and your yellow shores, but I can't, just as I can't take the woman I love with me. Goodbye, Asel. Good-bye, my pretty poplar in a red kerchief! Good-bye, my love, I want you to be happy ... — Chingiz Aitmatov

It is a pity the spirit does not grow old too. — Chingiz Aitmatov

I'm English and I'm used to coming from a world of period dramas, where there's a very polite restraint to everything. Everybody's sort of sitting in drawing rooms. — Clive Owen

All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. — H.L. Mencken

Oh, Issyk-Kul, my Issyk-Kul
my unfinished song! Why did I have to remember that day when I came here with Asel and stopped on the same rise, right above the water? Everything was the same. The blue-and-white waves ran up the yellow shore holding hands. The sun was setting behind the mountains, and at the far end of the lake the water was tinged with pink. The swans wheeled over the water with excited, exultant cries. They soared up and dropped down on outspread wings that seemed to hum. They whipped up the water and started wide, foaming circles. Everything was the same, only there was no Asel with me. Where are you, my slender poplar in a red kerchief, where are you now? — Chingiz Aitmatov

Fainting with heat, he suddenly found himself in the cold, cold river. He had turned into a fish. Tail, body, fins - everything was fishlike, except the head, which was his own and still ached. He swam through the muted, cool, underwater darkness and thought that now he would remain a fish forever and never go back to the moutains. "I won't return," he said to himself. "It's better to be a fish, it's better to be a fish ... — Chingiz Aitmatov

Even now I often ask myself: perhaps love produces a feeling of inspiration similar to that experienced by an artist or a poet? — Chingiz Aitmatov

But you no longer heard the song. You had gone away, my boy, into your tale. Did you know that you would never turn into a fish, that you would never reach Issyk-Kul, or see the white ship, or say to it: "Hello, white ship, it's I"?
You swam away. — Chingiz Aitmatov

So my advice to startups in this particular category is if you're going to put your product in beta - put your business model in beta with it. Far too often we are too product focused and not business-model focused. That's one thing I definitely would have done differently with JotSpot. — Joe Kraus

Where are you now? What roads are you treading? We have so many new roads now, right across the steppe all the way to the Altai and Siberia. Many brave souls are toiling there. Perhaps you're among them? You left, my Jamilia, across the wide steppe without a backward glance. Perhaps you are weary, perhaps you have lost faith in your self? Just lean on Daniyar's shoulder. Have him sing to you his song of love, of life, of the earth. May the steppe come alive and blossom in all its glory. May you recall that August night. Keep on, Jamilia, have no regrets; you've found your hard-sought happiness.
When I gaze at them long enough I can hear Daniyar's voice. He is calling to me, too, to take the highroad, which means it is time for me to get ready. I shall cross the steppe back to my village and find fresh colours there.
May Daniyar's song resound and may Jamilia's heart beat with every stroke of my brush. — Chingiz Aitmatov

I was astounded at the passion and fire of the melody itself. I could not describe it then, nor can I now. Was it just his voice or something more tangible emerging from his very soul that could arouse such emotion in another person, and bring one's innermost thoughts to life? — Chingiz Aitmatov

Coffee is the ultimate stress buster for me and I need my cup of coffee in the morning to kick start my day. — Anushka Sharma

And all of a sudden I began to understand his strangeness that made people shrug and mock; his dreaminess, his love of solitude, his silent manner. Now I understood why he sat on the look-out hill of an evening and why he spent a night by himself on the riverbank, why he constantly hearkened to sounds others could not hear and why his eyes would suddenly gleam and his drawn eyebrows twitch. He was a man deeply in love. I felt it was not simply a love for another person, it was somehow an uncommon, expansive love for life and earth. He had kept this love within himself, in his music, in his very being. A person with no feeling, no matter how good his voice, could never have sung like that. — Chingiz Aitmatov

Nothing but water
an ever-moving swell; nothing but waves, swiftly forming and instantly dying; nothing but depths; dark, fathomless depths; and nothing but sky, scudding white clouds, puffy and intangible. This was the living world, nothing besides, nothing else but sea. No winter or summer, no hills or ravines. — Chingiz Aitmatov

I was so sad for the children. I was so angry and irritable at home. It took nothing for me to tell Heidi off, nothing to shout at her. And Vanja, Vanja ... When she had her bouts of defiance and not only said no to everything but also shouted and screamed and punched, I shouted back, grabbed her and threw her onto the bed. I was completely out of control. Then came the remorse afterwards, the attempts to be patient, kind, nice, friendly, good. Good. And that was what I wanted to be, all I wanted to be, to be a good father to the three of them.
Wasn't I a good father? — Karl Ove Knausgard

His singing made me want to fall to the ground and kiss it, as a son to a mother, grateful that someone could love it so keenly. For the first time in my life something new awoke within me, something irresistible: I still cannot explain it. It was a need to express myself, yes, to express myself, not only to see and sense the world, but to bring to others my vision, my thoughts and sensations, to describe the beauty of the earth as inspiringly as Daniyar could sing. I caught my breath for fear and joy of the unknown. At that time, however, I had not yet realized the need to take up brush and paints. — Chingiz Aitmatov

In January, everything seems desolate. The Moon ascends to cold heights - and I, a ragged sky filled with dark kisses ... lie abandoned by you ... — John Geddes