Andrei Quotes & Sayings

Comrades, this man has a nice smile, but he's got iron teeth. — Andrei A. Gromyko

Never try to convey your idea to the audience - it is a thankless and senseless task. Show them life, and they'll find within themselves the means to assess and appreciate it. — Andrei Tarkovsky

You are just so helpful, Andrei. (Esperetta)
I try to be, Princess. (Andrei)
And you fail with such panache. (Esperetta) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I love poetry, be it in music or be it in Andrei Tarkovsky, Francesca Woodman or anyone else, I just love poetry. — Graciela Iturbide

I am a mistake of nature, a mad beast. — Andrei Chikatilo

Men can be pitiless towards a woman whose body has eluded them, particularly if this is thanks to their own cowardice. — Andrei Makine

The time has come for writers to become inaccessible again. The reason is not some kind of 'mystique' that makes people curious (though it helps), but the fact that no real writers ever lay down anything real in public-they work in solitude, they think hard, and their thoughts are rarely nice or 'friendly.' — Andrei Codrescu

Edward Conard's book represents the most cogent and persuasive analysis of the Financial Crisis to date. It is deeper and likely more accurate than what we have seen so far from journalists, academ- ics, and particularly former government officials. — Andrei Shleifer

Did you do this?"
"There are other ways to beat someone than with fists." Radu poked her in the side with a finger.
She surprised him by laughing. He stood up straighter, a proud grin at having surprised and delighted Lada bursting across his face. She never laughed unless she was laughing at him. He had done something right!
Then the lashings began.
Radu's smile wilted and died. He looked away. He was safe now. And Lada was proud of him, which had never happened before. He focused on that to ignore the sick feelings twisting his stomach as Aron and Andrei cried out in pain. He wanted his nurse - wanted her to hold and comfort him - and this, too, made him feel ashamed.
Lada watched the whip with a calculating look. "Still," she said. "Fists are faster. — Kiersten White

Above all, I feel that the sounds of this world are so beautiful in themselves that if only we could listen to them properly, cinema would have no need for music at all. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Relating a person to the whole world: that is the meaning of cinema. — Andrei Tarkovsky

There is a slight problem with being a conceptual artist these days: You won't get paid. But this levels the field and takes the art of money out of the field of serious art. The only conceptual artists who would conceive of making money on the Internet are a lowbrow species known as hustlers. — Andrei Codrescu

I've had a number of opportunities to hear Andrei Ryabov perform and I am amazed at the high level of creativity, technique and freshness in his playing. — Gene Bertoncini

Late this evening I looked at the sky and saw the stars. I felt as if it was the first time I had ever looked at them.
I was stunned.
The stars made an extraordinary impression on me — Andrei Tarkovsky

It's still a mystery to me exactly how I learned the language. [But] I was 19 years old and I had very urgent things to tell girls. — Andrei Codrescu

For me, the moral difficulties lie in the continual pressure brought to bear on my friends and immediate family, pressure which is not directed against me personally but which at the same time is all around me. — Andrei Sakharov

Look, I'm smiling at you, I'm smiling in you, I'm smiling through you. How can I be dead if I breathe in every quiver of your hand? — Andrei Sinyavsky

We can't feel anything - all that's left inside us is dust. — Andrei Platonov

The urge to kill, like the urge to beget,
Is blind and sinister. Its craving is set
Today on the flesh of a hare: tomorrow it can
Howl the same way for the flesh of a man. — Andrei Voznesensky

Cookbooks bear the same relation to real books that microwave food bears to your grandmother?s. — Andrei Codrescu

Then, with all my being I felt I was wildly, desperately in love. Not only with Maya and her dark locks flying in the wind as she ran. But also with the plants that swayed as she passed, and with that grey, sad sky and the air that smelled of rain. I was even in love with that old piece of farm machinery with flat tyres, sensing that it was quite essential to the harmony that had just been created before my eyes ... — Andrei Makine

O masses, o masses! When will you assume the image and likeness of your avant-garde? — Andrei Platonov

He should have told Vlad that in the old days a collection of poems could change your life, but a single poem could also cost the life of its author. — Andrei Makine

Greece is a sort of American vassal; the Netherlands is the country of American bases that grow like tulip bulbs; Cuba is the main sugar plantation of the American monopolies; Turkey is prepared to kowtow before any United States proconsul and Canada is the boring second fiddle in the American symphony. — Andrei Gromyko

Substitution ... the infinite cannot be made into matter, but it is possible to create an illusion of the infinite: the image. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Then she would wander through fields, over simple, poor land, looking carefully and keenly all round her, still getting used to being alive in the world, and feeling glad that everything in it was right for her - for her body, her heart, and her freedom. — Andrei Platonov

The meaning of religious truth is hope — Andrei Tarkovsky

Only when Prince Andrei was gone did Rostov think of what he ought to have said. And he was still more angry at having omitted to say it. He — Leo Tolstoy

Do not trust governments more than governments trust their own people. — Andrei Sakharov

My function is to make whoever sees my films aware of his need to love and to give his love, and aware the beauty is summoning him. — Andrei Tarkovsky

If they don't think, people act senselessly. — Andrei Platonov

There is a velvety sensuality here at the mouth of the Mississippi that you won't find anywhere else. Tell me what the air feels like at 3 A.M. on a Thursday night in August in Shaker Heights and I bet you won't be able to say because nobody stays up that late. But in New Orleans, I tell you, it's ink and honey passed through silver moonlight. — Andrei Codrescu

In the case of someone who is spiritual receptive, it is possible to talk of an analogy between the impact made by a work of art and that of a purely religious experience. Arts acts above all on the soul shaping its spiritual structure. — Andrei Tarkovsky

We know perfectly well that neither love nor peace of mind can be bought with any currency. — Andrei Tarkovsky

We can express our feelings regarding the world around us either by poetic or by descriptive means. I prefer to express myself metaphorically. Let me stress: metaphorically, not symbolically. A symbol contains within itself a definite meaning, certain intellectual formula, while metaphor is an image. An image possessing the same distinguishing features as the world it represents. An image - as opposed to a symbol - is indefinite in meaning. One cannot speak of the infinite world by applying tools that are definite and finite. We can analyse the formula that constitutes a symbol, while metaphor is a being-within-itself, it's a monomial. It falls apart at any attempt of touching it. — Andrei Tarkovsky

The agreement,' the colonel announced, 'says thirty-seven officers, fifty vehicles, and one hundred seventy five men.'
'What agreement?'
'The Berlin Agreement, — Andrei Cherny

Their own life together was like a subtle watercolor sketch, invisible to other people. They gave the world what it required of them and for the rest of the time were content to be forgotten. — Andrei Makine

Clearly the hardest thing for the working artist is to create his own conception and follow it, unafraid of the strictures it imposes, however rigid these may be ... I see it as the clearest evidence of genius when an artist follows his conception, his idea, his principle, so unswervingly that he has this truth of his constantly in his control, never letting go of it even for the sake of his own enjoyment of his work. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Eventually, a Soviet general sat down in the empty seat next to Howley. Rank-conscious, the Russian visibly shuddered when he realized he was sitting next to someone of much lower position. 'I see you're a colonel,' he said through an interpreter. Howley looked up from his plate and grumbled, 'I see you're a general. Here, have some salami. — Andrei Cherny

He alone knew the USSR was populated by many total enemies of socialism, egotists and vipers of the future world, and he secretly consoled himself by the thought that one day soon he would exterminate the whole mass of them, leaving alive only proletarian infants and pure orphans. — Andrei Platonov

Art is by nature aristocratic, and naturally selective in its effect on the audience. For even in its 'collective' manifestations, like theatre or cinema, its effect is bound up with the intimate emotions of each person who comes into contact with a work. The more the individual is traumatised and gripped by these emotions, the more significant a place will the work have in his experience.
The aristocratic nature of art, however does not in any way absolve the artist of his responsibility to his public and even, if you like, more broadly, to people in general. On the contrary, because of his special awareness of his time and of the world in which he lives, the artist becomes the voice of those who cannot formulate or express their view of reality. In that sense the artist is indeed vox populi. That is why he is called to serve his own talent, which means serving his people. — Andrei Tarkovsky

I am only interested in the views of two people: one is called Bresson and one called Bergman. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Becoming an artist does not merely mean learning something, acquiring professional techniques and methods. Indeed, as someone has said, in order to write well you have to forget the grammar. — Andrei Tarkovsky

People as such do not exist: they are all 'things conceived — Andrei Bely

A country which does not respect the rights of its own citizens will not respect the rights of its neighbours — Andrei Sakharov

Liberalization and democratization are in essence counter-revolution. — Andrei Grechko

In a certain sense the past is far more real, or at any rate more stable, more resilient than the present. The present slips and vanishes like sand between the fingers, acquiring material weight, only in its recollection. — Andrei Tarkovsky

So it must be!" thought Prince Andrei as he was driving out of the avenue of the house at Bald Hills. "She, a pathetic, innocent being, stays to be devoured by a senile old man. The old man feels he's to blame, but cannot change himself. My boy is growing up and rejoices at life, in which he will be the same as everybody else, the deceived or the deceiver. I'm going to the army - why? I don't know myself, and I wish to meet a man whom I despise, in order to give him an occasion to kill me and laugh at me! — Leo Tolstoy

Once again, without explaining anything, they understood that they must leave. Go away before this world woke up and continued with a life from which they were forever excluded. — Andrei Makine

Our fraught way of life gives each of us a narrowly defined role, creating conditions conducive to developing only those elements in our psyche which allow us to grow within the confines of that role. The other areas of our psyche waste away. Hence lack of contact. Here psychological and social factors combine, and produce fear, distrust, moral baseness and the death of hope. — Andrei Tarkovsky

ALL ART, OF COURSE, IS INTELLECTUAL, BUT FOR ME, ALL THE ARTS, AND CINEMA EVEN MORE SO, MUST ABOVE ALL BE EMOTIONAL AND ACT UPON THE HEART. — Andrei Tarkovsky

A literary work can only be received through symbols, through concepts - for that is what words are; but cinema, like music, allows for utterly direct, emotional, sensuous perception of the work. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Artistic creation, after all, is not subject to absolute laws, valid from age to age; since it is related to the more general aim of mastery of the world, it has an infinite number of facets, the vincula that connect man with his vital activity; and even if the path towards knowledge is unending, no step that takes man nearer to a full understanding of the meaning of his existence can be too small to count. — Andrei Tarkovsky

The beauty of Molly's is that it is not, whether in the daytime or at night, the exclusive preserve of an age or income group. Unlike the sterile night scenes of pretentious San Francisco or New York, Molly's (and most other New Orleans bars) welcomes all ages, all colors, and all sexual persuasions, provided they are willing to surrender to the atmosphere. — Andrei Codrescu

Happiness will come from materialism, not from meaning. — Andrei Platonov

IN THE CINEMA A DIRECTOR EXPRESSES HIS INDIVIDUALITY FIRST AND FOREMOST THROUGH HIS SENSE OF TIME, THROUGH RHYTHM. RHYTHM GIVES COLOUR TO A WORK BY DISTINGUISHABLE STYLISTIC CHARACTERISTICS. RHYTHM MUST ARISE NATURALLY IN A FILM, A FUNCTION OF THE DIRECTOR'S INNATE SENSE OF LIFE AND COMMENSURATE WITH HIS QUEST FOR TIME. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Looking into Napoleon's eyes, Prince Andrei thought about the insignificance of grandeur, about the insignificance of life, the meaning of which no one could understand, and about the still greater insignificance of death, the meaning of which no one among the living could understand or explain. — Leo Tolstoy

The working class is my home country, and my future is linked with the proletariat. — Andrei Platonov

Our secrets, odd or not, are the pins that keep our inner life in place: the inform our psyche with meaning. — Andrei Codrescu

We have forgotten to observe. Instead of observing, we do things according to patterns. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Once [the Senator's] brain has come into play with the mysterious stranger, that stranger exists, really does exist: he will not disappear from the Petersburg prospects while a senator with such thoughts exists, because thought, too, exists.

And so let our stranger be a real live stranger! And let my stranger's two shadows be real live shadows!

Those dark shadows will follow, they will follow on the stranger's heels, in the same way as the stranger himself will directly follow the senator; the aged senator will pursue you, he will pursue you, too, reader, in his black carriage: and from this day forth you will never forget him! — Andrei Bely

The real technology -behind all our other technologies- is language. It actually creates the world our consciousness lives in. — Andrei Codrescu

Unspoken feelings are unforgettable. — Andrei Tarkovsky

unreality is a condition of life. — Andrei Bitov

Historians rewrite the truth every day. What interests us is the truth that gets the reader to reach for his wallet — Andrei Makine

Adam Antonovich's father was a tubby tyrant with a triple chin and chinks where his eyes should have been. All his life he had amassed money. In old age he had exchanged it for space; his estates grew, grew and swelled.

("Adam") — Andrei Bely

It is a mistake to talk about the artist looking for his subject. In fact, the subject grows within him like a fruit and begins to demand expression. It is like childbirth. The poet has nothing to be proud of. He is not master of the situation, but a servant. Creative work is his only possible form of existence, and his every work is like a deed he has no power to annul. For him to be aware that the sequence of such deeds is due and ripe, that it lies in the very nature of things, he has to have faith in the idea; for only faith interlocks the system of images for which read system of life. — Andrei Tarkovsky

When you've nothing to live for, you get to thinking inside your head. — Andrei Platonov

I believe in one thing: the human spirit is immortal and indestructible. In the beyond there could be anything, it is of no importance whatsoever. What we call death is not death. It's a rebirth. A caterpillar becomes a cocoon. I think there is a life after death and it is that that is unnerving. It would be so much simpler to conceive of oneself as a telephone cord that is unplugged. Then you could live any way that you wanted. God would have no importance of any kind. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Inside every poor creature was a sense of some other happy destiny, a destiny that was necessary and inevitable -why, then, did they find their lives such a burden and why were they always waiting for something? — Andrei Platonov

Religion, philosophy, art - those three pillars on which the world has rested - were invented by man in order symbolically to encapsulate the idea of infinity, setting against it a symbol of its possible attainment (which in real terms is of-course impossible). Humanity has found nothing else on such an enormous scale. Admittedly man found it by instinct, without understanding why he needed God (easier that way!) or philosophy (explains everything, even the meaning of life!) or art (immortality). — Andrei Tarkovsky

I remember, the first time I saw a [Andrei] Tarkovsky film, I was shocked by it. I didn't know what to do. I was fascinated, because suddenly I realized that film could have so many more layers to it than what I had imagined before. Then others, like Kurosawa and Fellini, were like a new discovery for me, another country. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Real artists free of the tedium of money can use, now, all of society as an idea factory. — Andrei Codrescu

I am convinced that any attempt to restore harmony in the world can only rest on the renewal of personal responsibility. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Amedeo loved thick tomes, and in tackling them he felt the physical pleasure of undertaking a great task. Weighing them in his hand, thick, closely printed, squat, he would consider with some apprehension the number of pages, the length of the chapters, then venture into them, a bit reluctant at the beginning, without any desire to perform the initial chore of remembering the names, catching the drift of the story; then he would entrust himself to it, running along the lines, crossing the grid of the uniform page, and beyond the leaden print the flame and fire of battle appeared, the cannonball that, whistling through the sky, fell at the feet of Prince Andrei, and the shop filled with engravings and statues where Frederic Moreau, his heart in his mouth, was to meet the Arnoux family. Beyond the surface of the page you entered a world where life was more alive than here on this side ... — Italo Calvino

It would be good," thought Prince Andrei, glancing at the little image that his sister had hung around his neck with such reverence and emotion, "It would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems to Princess Marya . How good it would be to know where to seek help in this life, and what to expect after it, beyond the grave! How happy and at peace I should be if I could now say:" Lord have mercy on me! ... But to whom should I say this? To some power
indefinable and incomprehensible, to which I not only cannot appeal, but which I cannot express in words
The Great All or Nothing," he said to himself, "or to that God who has been sewn into this amulet by Marya? There is nothing certain, nothing except the nothingness of everything that is comprehensible to me, and the greatness of something incomprehensible but all important! — Leo Tolstoy

If kids can forget their own mothers but still have a sense of comrade Lenin, then Soviet power really is here to stay! — Andrei Platonov

More than ever, we are dealing with the history of the masses, and no history of individuals. Less than ever, it is possible to predict the near future ... — Andrei I. Shingarev

All of us are infected today with an extraordinary egoism. And that is not freedom; freedom means learning to demand only of oneself, not of life and others, and knowing how to give: sacrifice in the name of love. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Never trouble anyone else with what you can do yourself — Andrei Tarkovsky

[Andrei Sakharov] won his Nobel in 1975 for demanding a halt to the testing of nuclear weapons. He, of course, had already tested his. His wife was a pediatrician! What sort of person could perfect a hydrogen bomb while married to a child-care specialist? What sort of physician would stay married to a mate that cracked?
"Anything interesting happen at work today, honeybunch?"
"Yes. My bomb is going to work just great. And how are you doing with that kid with chicken pox? — Kurt Vonnegut

Art is realistic when it strives to express an ethical ideal. Realism is striving for truth, and truth is always beautiful. Here the aesthetic coincides with the ethical. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Art must must carry man's craving for the ideal, must be an expression of his reaching out towards it; that art must give man hope and faith. And the more hopeless the world in the artist's version, the more clearly perhaps must we see the ideal that stands in opposition - otherwise life becomes impossible! Art symbolises the meaning of our existence. — Andrei Tarkovsky

MANY MANAGE TO SEPARATE THEIR LIFE FROM THEIR FILMS. THEY LIVE ONE WAY AND EXPRESS OTHER IDEAS IN THEIR WORKS. THEY ARE ABLE TO SPLIT THEIR CONSCIENCE. I CAN'T. TO ME CINEMA IS NOT JUST MY JOB: IT'S MY LIFE, AND EACH FILM IS AN ACT OF MY LIFE. — Andrei Tarkovsky

A poet is someone who can use a single image to send a universal message. — Andrei Tarkovsky

It is the job of the market to turn the base material of our emotions into gold. — Andrei Codrescu

Art is a meta-language, with the help of which people try to communicate with one another; to impart information about themselves and assimilate the experience of others. Again, this has not to do with practical advantage but with realising the idea of love, the meaning of which is in sacrifice: the very antithesis of pragmatism. I simply cannot believe that an artist can ever work only for the sake of 'self-expression.' Self-expression if meaningless unless it meets with a response. For the sake of creating a spiritual bond with others it can only be an agonising process, one that involves no practical gain: ultimately it is an act of sacrifice. But surely it cannot be worth the effort merely for the sake of hearing one's own echo? — Andrei Tarkovsky

What nobody seems to understand is that love can only be one-sided, that no other love exists, that in any other form it is not love. If it involves less than total giving, it is not love. It is impotent; for the moment it is nothing. — Andrei Tarkovsky

Nosferatu is the daddy of modern American sex. — Andrei Codrescu

When I used my knife, it brought psychological relief. I know I have to be destroyed. I was a mistake of nature. — Andrei Chikatilo

The cold edge to his voice sent a shiver down Shiara's spine. She looked over at Dev, certain he would laugh off Andrei's accusations, but his expression did nothing to reassure her. — J.C. Morrows

The only condition of fighting for the right to create is faith in your own vocation, readiness to serve, and refusal to compromise. — Andrei Tarkovsky

He had already come to see human lives as one single communal life and it was perhaps this perception that gave him hope. — Andrei Makine

Prince Andrei recognized Wolzogen and Clausewitz, accompanied by a Cossack. They passed close by, continuing to converse, and Pierre and Andrei involuntarily heard the following phrases: "Der Krieg muss im Raum verlegt werden. Der Ansicht kann ich nicht genug Preis geben,"* said one. "O ja," said the other voice. — Leo Tolstoy

A child doesn't have to be a prodigy. He has to be a child. The only thing that matters is that he shouldn't become 'stuck' in childishness. — Andrei Tarkovsky

I somehow think that it's better to screen inferior literature, which nonetheless contains the seed of something real- which can be developed in the film and grow into something wonderful as a result of going through your hands — Andrei Tarkovsky

I love your eyes, my darling friend, Their play so passionate and bright'ning, When a sudden stare up you send, And like a heaven-blown lightning, It'd take in all from end to end But there's more that I admire: Your eyes when they're downcast In bursts of love-inspired fire And through the eyelash goes fast A somber, dull call of desire.. — Andrei Tarkovsky

At the time of the Revolution, dogs howled day and night all over Russia. — Andrei Platonov

In war the most testing moments are those of peace , for a dead man lying in the grass makes the living see the world as it would be, but for their folly. — Andrei Makine

Intellectual freedom is the only guarantee of a scientific - democratic approach to politics, economic development, and culture. — Andrei Sakharov