Balalaika Quotes & Sayings

Oh yes, and compulsory ferret-legging down the pub on Tuesday evenings, for the tourist trade tha' knows." "Ferret-legging?" Rachel looked at him incredulously. "Yup. You tie your kilt up around your knees with duct tape - as you probably know, no Yorkshireman would be seen dead wearing anything under his sporran - and take a ferret by the scruff of his neck. A ferret, that's like, uh, a bit like a mink. Only less friendly. It's a young man's initiation rite; you stick the ferret where the sun doesn't shine and dance the furry dance to the tune of a balalaika. Last man standing and all that, kind of like the ancient Boer aardvark-kissing competition." Martin shuddered dramatically. "I hate ferrets. The bloody things bite like a cask-strength single malt without the nice after-effects. — Charles Stross

Actually I am pretty pregnant with the news Sid brought me, but glad we have not spread it. The girls look very happy. With their heads bound up in babushkas they might be out of the peasant chorus of a Russian opera. Any minute now we will sing and dance to the balalaika. Charity is tall and striking; Sally smaller, darker, quieter. One dazzles, the other warms. In a couple of hours I will need sympathy, but for now I like being washed by the wind. — Wallace Stegner

My mother is changing history. She is making her balalaika-smashing mother into a heroine. Does she want me to do the same for her? Is that what good children do for their parents? What about good writers? — Gary Shteyngart

Kerensky he dismissed in yet another snappy line, describing him as 'a balalaika on which they play to deceive the workers and peasants'. — Catherine Merridale

Slothrop hears a girl singing. Accompanying herself on a balalaika. One of those sad little Parisian-sounding tunes in 3/4: Love never goes away, Never completely dies, Always some souvenir Takes us by sad surprise. You went away from me, One rose was left behind - Pressed in my Book of Hours, That is the rose I find. . . . Though it's another year, Though it's another me, Under the rose is a drying tear, Under my linden tree. . . . Love never goes away, Not if it's really true, It can return, by night, by day, Tender and green and new As the leaves from a linden tree, love, that I left with you. — Thomas Pynchon