Ilya Quotes & Sayings

There will be no beautiful widow with Persian eyes sitting at your grave. And teary-eyed kids won't be asking: "Papa, papa, can you hear us? — Ilya Ilf

Everyone drank to popular education and to the irrigation of Uzbekistan. — Ilya Ilf

I'm not afraid of anything - except bear. But bear in the forest. — Ilya Bryzgalov

Every master knows that the material teaches the artist. — Ilya Ehrenburg

The most difficult thing for me is to leave the New Jersey Devils, a great organization that I have a lot of respect for, and our fans that have been great to me. — Ilya Kovalchuk

Let your promises be few, and let them be immovable. — Ilya Atani

I can't predict whether I'll leave here freely or in handcuffs. — Ilya Yashin

The statistical probability that organic structures and the most precisely harmonized reactions that typify living organisms would be generated by accident, is zero. — Ilya Prigogine

The epithet "monolithic" is often used as a term of praise in this country; but a monolith is a mass of stone. Human beings are far more complex. — Ilya Ehrenburg

The irreversibility of time is the mechanism that brings order out of chaos. — Ilya Prigogine

California is the most reactionary state in America. Fascist sentiments are very strong here. — Ilya Ilf

Now we see evolutionary trends in a variety of areas ranging from atomic and molecular physics through fluid mechanics, chemistry and biology to large scale systems of relevance in environmental and economic sciences — Ilya Prigogine

Every day I would run to the library to get new books. Reading was a passion: I wanted to understand life. I read Dostoevsky and Brehm, Jules Verne and Turgenev, Dickens and the Zhivopisnoye Obozreniye; and the more I read, th emore I doubted everything. Lies surrounded me on all sides; one moment I wanted to run off to the Indian jungle, the next to throw a bomb at the governor-general's house on Tverskaya, the next to hang myself. — Ilya Ehrenburg

Prusis told me that the fluke's raging in Moscow, and there's nothing to bury people in. All the material's been used up. So I decided to come out and set things straight.'
Ostap, who had been listening curiously to the entire conversation, stepped in. 'Listen, pops. It's Paris where the flu is raging.'
'In Paris?'
'Well, yes. So go to Paris. You'll rake it in there! It's true that you'll have a few difficulties with the visa, but don't get down about it, pops. If Briand takes a shine to you, your life won't be half-bad: you'll be set up as personal coffin-maker to the municipality of Paris. — Ilya Ilf

If you should attempt to maintain that film is an art in conversation with a cultured, intelligent American, he'll just plain stop talking to you. — Ilya Ilf

I think like, 'And we have some problems here on the earth we worry about? Compared to likenothing. Just be happy. Don't worry be happy right now — Ilya Bryzgalov

This (San Francisco) is the most beautiful city in America, Probably because it looks nothing like America — Ilya Ilf

(1) irreversible processes are as real as reversible ones. (2) irreversible processes play a fundamental constructive role in the physical world. (3) irreversibility is deeply rooted in dynamics. — Ilya Prigogine

Do not count the days, do not count the miles. Count only the Germans you have killed. Kill the German - this is your old mother's prayer. Kill the German - this is what your children beseech you to do. Kill the German - this is the cry of your Russian earth. Do not waver. Do not let up. Kill. — Ilya Ehrenburg

I never want to be the poster guy. It's not me. — Ilya Kovalchuk

Ilya, what do you want?" His smile vanished. When he contemplated his vision, his gaze narrowed until Tess could almost imagine it as a single beam, piercing to the heart of the universe, capable of vaporizing any object that stood in its path. "The world. — Kate Elliott

As Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute says, what these cases have in common is a view by the Justice Department that "federal power is virtually unlimited: Citizens must subsume their liberty to whatever the experts in a given field determine the best or most useful policy to be. — John Fund

No one likes us, unless you count Criminal Investigations, which also doesn't like us. — Ilya Ilf

The real is only one realization of the possible. — Ilya Prigogine

In peaceful times in a peaceful country a man grows up, goes to school, marries, works, suffers illnesses, grows old. He may go through the whole of life without understanding what freedom is. No doubt he always feels free to the extent to which it is proper for a respectable citizen with average powers of imagination to be free. — Ilya Ehrenburg

Kill! Kill! In the German race there is nothing but evil; not one among the living, not one among the yet unborn but is evil! Follow the precepts of Comrade Stalin. Stamp out the fascist beast once and for all in its lair! Use force and break the racial pride of these German women. Take them as your lawful booty. Kill! As you storm onward, kill, you gallant soldiers of the Red Army. — Ilya Ehrenburg

It seems to me that the novel is very much alive as a form. Without any question, every epoch has its own forms, and the novel nowadays cannot resemble that of the nineteenth century. In this domain all experiments are justified, and it is better to write something new clumsily than to repeat the old brilliantly. In the nineteenth century, novels dealt with the fate of a person or of a family; this was linked to life in that period. In our time the destinies of people are interwoven. Whether man recognizes it or not, his fate is much more linked to that of many other people than it used to be. — Ilya Ehrenburg

Maybe we could make it to Stalingrad on twenty rubles. But how would we eat? Vitamins, my dear comrade marshal, don't get handed out for free. — Ilya Ilf

Bryzgalov isn't just a running comedy act. He's one of the league's most thoughtful players and the fact that he offers the insight he does in his second language is something he'll never get enough credit for. — Ilya Bryzgalov

Everyone was searching for something, conducting lively arguments, getting excited, but behind it all one felt weariness, disillusion, emptiness. — Ilya Ehrenburg

Clotilde stammered. "Why didn't you hang yourself? You were just saying that art is eternal. I destroyed your eternal art. Why are you still alive, man?"
"What's eternal is eternal, but I still have to get my commissions done on time," said Vasya. "What did you think?"
Vasya was just an everyday hack sculptor of average talent. And Clothilde was reading too much Schiller. — Ilya Ilf

Just think what will happen when the tournament is over and all the visitors have gone. The residents of Moscow, crowded by the housing crisis, will flee to your magnificent city. The capital will be transferred automatically to Vasyuki. The government will move here. Vasyuki will be renamed New Moscow, and Moscow will be Old Vasyuki. Leningraders and Kharkovians will grind their teeth, but they won't be able to do a thing about it. New Moscow will become the elegant cultural center of Europe, and soon, of the whole world. — Ilya Ilf

The way people used to kiss before the age of historical materialism. — Ilya Ilf

In all of your relationships, romantic or not, GIVE. Practice it. You get good at what you practice, and sometimes you even become great. — Ilya Atani

Silence (in a relationship) is never your friend. Communication is the pathway to healing and growth — Ilya Atani

Pushkin wrote Turkish poems and he was never in Turkey. — Ilya Ilf

Can you say the following phrase in French: "Gentlemen, I haven't eaten in six days"?'

Ippolit Matveevich began haltingly, 'Messieurs... messieurs, je ne, I think, je ne mange pas... six, what is that again... un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six... six... jour. Right: je ne mange pas six jours!'

'That's quite a pronunciation you've got there, Kisa! Still, what do you expect from a beggar. Of course a beggar in European Russia speaks French worse than Millerand. — Ilya Ilf

We grow in direct proportion to the amount of chaos we can sustain and dissipate — Ilya Prigogine

Knowledge has outstripped character development, and the young today are given an education rather than an upbringing. — Ilya Ehrenburg

Unfortunately, young Russian artists are in a difficult position today. Painting, like all other arts, rests on a continuity of experience. More than anything, young painters and sculptors need to know the works of their immediate elders. Such a continuity does not exist here to a sufficient degree in the visual arts. — Ilya Ehrenburg

They say that sometimes a man cannot recognize himself in a looking-glass. It is even harder to recognize oneself in the clouded mirror of the past. — Ilya Ehrenburg

Music burst through him, perfect notes he hear rarely. Fire and ice, wind and calm, sky and earth, water and rock all fused together. Joley seemed as wild and turbulent s the sea, yet beneath her fiery passion, at the very core of her, she was as forceful and strong and as constant as the deepest ocean currents. Ilya seemed as calm as a windless sea, yet beneath the surface smoldered a volcano of such explosive magnitude, his power could easily sweep everything from his path. Together they completed each other, his melody and hers merging together into a single, perfect harmony. — Christine Feehan

Music has a great advantage: without mentioning anything, it can say everything. — Ilya Ehrenburg

For me the artworld is like a huge river, which began somewhere in the past and keeps flowing towards the future. — Ilya Kabakov

I am who I am. Life is too beautiful to be sad, to be depressed. The sun comes up every day and it's beautiful. — Ilya Bryzgalov

To a Soviet person, used to the nationality policy of the USSR, all the mistakes of the American government's Indian policy are evident from the first glance. The mistakes are, of course, intentional. The fact of the matter is that in Indian schools, class is conducted exclusively in English. There is no written form of any Indian language at all. It's true that every Indian tribe has its own language, but this doesn't change anything. If there were any desire to do so, the many American specialists who have fallen in love with Indian culture could create Indian written languages in a short time. But imperialism remains imperialism. — Ilya Ilf

The word "America" has well-developed grandiose associations for a Soviet person, for whom it refers to a country of skyscrapers, where day and night one hears the unceasing thunder of surface and underground trains, the hellish roar of automobile horns, and the continuous despairing screams of stockbrokers rushing through the skyscrapers waving their ever-falling shares. — Ilya Ilf

The usual relationship between an artist and his painting is like the relationship with the father, or a husband's with his wife. But mine is a relationship with a stranger ... with the chance acquaintance. — Ilya Kabakov

A pity we hadn't had time to say all the things we wanted to each other. — Ilya Ehrenburg

Clearly it's not all that pacific on the Pacific Ocean — Ilya Ilf

We know that art is connected with the land, with its salt, with its smell, that outside of national culture there is no art. Cosmopolitanism - a world in which things lose their color and form, and words lose their significance. We love in our past all that we consider native, wonderful and fair. — Ilya Ehrenburg

Ilya hit the back of his head against the wall as if he could jolt her out of his mind. But she was already wrapped inside him and he was never going to be free of her. He knew that now, knew that no matter how disciplined he'd always been, his control went out the window whenever he laid eyes on Joley. And discipline wasn't going to save either of them this time.

He couldn't take his eyes off of her as she moved across the stage. Her voice swelled with power, vibrating through his body until he couldn't think with wanting her. He could have lived with that. The chemistry between them was so damn potent he ached every minute of every day, but there was so much more than sex. He belonged to Joley Drake. Body and soul. Men like him didn't ever belong to anyone - and no one belonged to them. Worse, she was slowly stealing his heart. He could take the craving for her body. He could even live without his soul, but if he allowed her access to his heart, he would be lost. — Christine Feehan

She was, after all, a mattress owner and understood the subtleties of life. — Ilya Ilf

Our suspicions are being confirmed that Nashi will serve as a cover for storm brigades that will use violence against democratic organisations. — Ilya Yashin

Ippolit Matveevich turned even redder, pulled out a tiny notebook, and wrote in a calligraphic hand:
25/4/1927 - rubles issued to Comrade Bender - 8.
Ostap took a look inside the little book.
'Oh-ho! If you've gone ahead and opened a personal account for me, then the least you could do is tally it right. Start up a debit column, start up a credit column. Don't forget to enter the sixty thousand rubles you owe me in the debits, and the vest can go in the credits. The balance is in my favor: 59,992 rubles. — Ilya Ilf

The future is uncertain ... but this uncertainty is at the very heart of human creativity. — Ilya Prigogine

It is a remarkable fact that the second law of thermodynamics has played in the history of science a fundamental role far beyond its original scope. Suffice it to mention Boltzmann's work on kinetic theory, Planck's discovery of quantum theory or Einstein's theory of spontaneous emission, which were all based on the second law of thermodynamics. — Ilya Prigogine

The main character of any living system is openness. — Ilya Prigogine

You could cover the whole earth with asphalt, but sooner or later green grass would break through. — Ilya Ehrenburg

But in the secret history of anger
one man's silence / lives in the bodies of others. — Ilya Kaminsky

OK, they fire the puck from the blue line. Chief usually yelling 'block the shot' at the defensemen. They doesn't have the goalie gear, but they have to block the shot. So who is more crazy, me or the defensemen? Who is more weird? — Ilya Bryzgalov

Orgasm is indeed the climax of the deed, but does not every mountain have two slopes? You have successfully carried her to the summit of her desires, but now your duty is to gently carry her back down the other side. — Ilya Atani

Don't believe Wikipedia, not everything written there is true. The Soviet Artists Union was not a communist party organization. It was a professional union, which did not protect you from the government if the government decided you were the enemy, but it did give you the possibility to work in your profession and survive. — Ilya Kabakov

You guys just here to blame someone. You never look yourselves in the mirror, eh? You're always good. You never make the mistakes. Your articles are always perfect. In reality, what have you done for this city? If you ask yourself, what have you done besides only criticize? Not much. — Ilya Bryzgalov

Don't teach me how to live. I'm wicked now. I have money. But I'm magnanimous. I'll give you twenty rubles and three days to sack the city! I'm like Suvorov! Plunder the city, Kisa! Have fun! — Ilya Ilf

Perhaps it is as simple as Hannah's sister is marrying one of the few men in the world I call friend." His gaze strayed to where Joley stood rigid against the wall. "Or perhaps I wanted to see, one more time, whether the reason I can no longer sleep at night is worth it. — Christine Feehan

Podkolyosin asked tragically, Why are you keeping quiet, like the League of Nations? — Ilya Ilf

Let's put it to a vote. Shall the ballots be open or secret?"
"We don't need Soviet-style voting," Charushnikov said, offended. "Let's vote the honest way, the European way: secret ballots. — Ilya Ilf

The more we know about our universe, the more difficult it becomes to believe in determinism. — Ilya Prigogine

Let me remind you right now though of this one thing: your wife is not a child. Your wife is your equal, your partner, your peer, and a whole host of other things, none of which give her any less rank in the home and marriage than you have. So, though your natural inclination when she makes a mistake may be to judge, correct, and/or reprove her, you may NOT do so. ... You've been tasked to be many, many things to your Queen, my son, but disciplinarian is not one of them. — Ilya Atani

A lot of artists were members of the artistic union. It gave you the possibility to buy paints, canvases, brushes, even the possibility to get a studio if you had the money to build it. It also gave you the possibility to make your living by making official art and then you would get a lot of "official" commissions: portraits, paintings, murals, etc. — Ilya Kabakov

Today, far continents have become suburbs. Even the moon has somehow come closer. But for all that, the past has not lost its power, and if within a lifetime a man changes his skin an infinite number of times--almost as often as his suits--still he does not change his heart: he has but one. — Ilya Ehrenburg

It wouldn't have been surprising if the girl suddenly stamped her foot and began: "Comrades! Allow me to summarize the achievements which ... ," and so forth, because we have exemplary children who can make two-hour speeches with forlorn diligence. But the Young Pioneer from Roaring Springs took the bull by the horns with her little hands and belted out, in a funny, high-pitched voice: "Long live the Five-Year Plan! — Ilya Ilf

I can't listen to music often. It plays on my nerves; it makes me want to say silly, tender things and stroke the heads of people who, living in a dirty hell, can yet create such beauty. — Ilya Ehrenburg

I'm lost in the woods right now, — Ilya Bryzgalov

It's only game. Why you have to be mad? — Ilya Bryzgalov

The solar system is so humongous big. — Ilya Bryzgalov

I don't care about [being a star]. The most important thing for me now is just do my job. — Ilya Kovalchuk

Fear is the reason for making art. It is a means to freedom. — Ilya Kabakov

I am Emir Dynamite!" he shouted, swaying on top of the tall camelback. "If within two days we don't get any decent food, I'll incite the tribes to revolt! I swear! I will appoint myself the Prophet's representative and declare holy war, jihad. On Denmark, for example. Why did the Danes torment their Prince Hamlet? Considering the current political situation, a casus beli like this would satisfy even the League of Nations. No, seriously, I'll buy a million worth of rifles from the British
they love to sell firearms to the tribes
and onward to Denmark. Germany will let us through
in lieu of war reparations. Imagine the tribes invading Copenhagen! I'll lead the charge on a white camel. — Ilya Ilf

Memory retains some things and discards others. I remember every detail of some scenes from my childhood and adolescence, by no means the most important ones. I remember some people and have totally forgotten others. Memory is like the headlights of a car at night, which fall now on a tree, now on a hut, now on a man. People (usually writers) who tell the story of their lives as a continuous and detailed whole generally fill in the gaps with conjecture; it is hard to tell where genuine reminiscence ends and the novel begins. — Ilya Ehrenburg

Author's Prayer
If I speak for the dead, I must
leave this animal of my body,
I must write the same poem over and over
for the empty page is a white flag of their surrender.
If I speak of them, I must walk
on the edge of myself, I must live as a blind man
who runs through the rooms without
touching the furniture.
Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking "What year
is it?"
I can dance in my sleep and laugh
in front of the mirror.
Even sleep is a prayer, Lord,
I will praise your madness, and
in a language not mine, speak
of music that wakes us, music
in which we move. For whatever I say
is a kind of petition and the darkest days
must I praise. — Ilya Kaminsky

So what was in this building before historical materialism?'
'Before what?'
'You know, back then, under the old regime?'
'Oh. Under the old regime my master lived here.'
'A bourgeois?'
'You're a bourgeois yourself! He wasn't a bourgeois. He was a marshal of the nobility.'
'So he was a proletarian, then?'
'You're a proletarian yourself! I told you loud and clear, a marshal.'
The conversation with the clever dvornik with a vague understanding of the class structure of society would have lasted god knows how long if the young man hadn't made a decisive move. — Ilya Ilf

The idea of spontaneous generation of life in its present form is therefore highly improbable even to the scale of the billions of years during which prebotic evolution occurred. — Ilya Prigogine

Time, my twin, take me by the hand through the streets of your city — Ilya Kaminsky

Don't worry be happy right now. — Ilya Bryzgalov

Order arise from chaos. — Ilya Prigogine

Honor your wife by fulfilling your commitment to be faithful, for she has already honored you by believing that you will. — Ilya Atani

A week ago, the Water Rescue Society had held an evening there, as evidenced by the slogan hanging on the wall: THE CAUSE OF HELPING THE DROWNING IS IN THE HANDS OF THE DROWNING THEMSELVES. — Ilya Ilf

No." Ilya lifted his mouth from hers, his fingers reluctantly releasing her. "Not like this. When you give yourself to me, it's all the way and forever. This is too easy."

Joley flung her head back, glaring at him. "You're saying no to me?"

"We're not doing this, not like this. You want to get off, you can come home with me and get into my bed where you belong. — Christine Feehan

People seldom learn from the mistakes of others-not because they deny the value of the past, but because they are faced with new problems. — Ilya Ehrenburg

When you're up on that stage and you're working the audience, all I can think about is slamming you against the wall and burying myself in you over and over, so deep they'll never get us apart. — Christine Feehan

Kill the Germans, wherever you find them! Every German is our moral enemy. Have no mercy on women, children, or the aged! Kill every German - wipe them out! — Ilya Ehrenburg

I want to keep growing. I should take a couple steps every year if I want to be one of the best players in the league. — Ilya Kovalchuk

He was only thirty-eight. His body was clean, well-fed, and benign. He had all his teeth. A fresh Armenian joke stirred in his head like a child in its mother's womb. He thought life was wonderful. — Ilya Ilf

I left with a heavy heart and a still heavier suitcase--I had filled it with my favourite books. — Ilya Ehrenburg

I was right when I said a very long time ago that our age would leave few living documents behind it: it was rare for anyone to keep a diary, letters were short and businesslike--"I'm alive and well"--and few memoirs were written. There are many reasons for this. Let me mention just one, not perhaps recognized by everybody: we were too often at loggerheads with our own past to give it proper thought. Within the half-century, our ideas on people and events have changed many times; conversations were broken off in mid-sentence; thoughts and feelings could not but be affected by circumstances. — Ilya Ehrenburg

In far from equilibrium conditions, the concept of probability that underlies Boltzmann's order principle is no longer valid if the structures we observe do not correspond to a maximum of complexions — Ilya Prigogine

Entropy is the price of structure. — Ilya Prigogine

A Spaniard and a Pole worked in the barbershop where we got our hair cut. An Italian shined our shoes. A Croat washed our car. This was America. — Ilya Ilf