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“Is that vodka?" Margarita asked weakly.
The cat jumped up in his seat with indignation.
"I beg pardon, my queen," he rasped, "Would I ever allow myself to offer vodka to a lady? This is pure alcohol!”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Annushka has already bought the sunflower oil, and has not only bought it, but has already spilled it.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“For some a prologue, for some an epilogue.”
― Bulgakov Mikhail Afanas'evich

“That's what we've been taught, this is the underpinning of all European culture-this firm belief that there are no secrets that won't sooner or later come to light. Who was it that said it? Jesus? No, Pascal, I think it was�� so naïve. But this faith has been nurtured for centuries; it has sprouted its own mythology: the cranes of Ibycus, manuscripts don't burn. An ontological faith in the fundamental knowability of every human deed. The certainty that, as they now teach journalism majors, you can find everything on the Internet.

As if the Library of Alexandria never existed. Or the Pogruzhalsky arson, when the whole historical section of the Academy of Sciences' Public Library, more than six-hundred thousand volumes, including the Central Council archives from 1918, went up in flames. That was in the summer of 1964; Mom was pregnant with me already, and almost for an entire month afterward, as she made her way to work at the Lavra, she would get off the trolleybus when it got close to the university and take the subway the rest of the way: above ground, the stench from the site of the fire made her nauseous. Artem said there were early printed volumes and even chronicles in that section-our entire Middle Ages went up in smoke, almost all of the pre-Muscovite era. The arsonist was convicted after a widely publicized trial, and then was sent to work in Moldova's State Archives: the war went on. And we comforted ourselves with "manuscripts don't burn."

Oh, but they do burn. And cannot be restored.”
― Oksana Zabuzhko, The Museum of Abandoned Secrets

“Kas sakė, kad pasaulyje nėra tikros, ištikimos, amžinos ���𾱱�ės? Te nupjauna melagiui jo šlykštų liežuvį!”
― Michail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“-Не съществуват никакви теории! - крещях аз в пристъп на крайна самонадеяност, дори скърцах със зъби, и изведнъж съвсем неочаквано видях върху сивото си сако голямо мазно петно със залепнало парченце лук. Озърнах се безпомощно. От нощта нямаше и помен. Бомбардов угаси лампата и в синевата почнаха да се очертават всички предмети в цялото си безобразие.
Нощта беше изядена, нощта си отиде.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, Записки покойника

“Negrįžtamai pasitraukė, sekmadienio naktį gavęs atleidimą, karaliaus ��
žvaigždininko sūnus, žiaurus penktasis Judėjos prokuratorius raitelis Poncijus Pilotas”
― Michail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Mi consenta di chiederle come può l'uomo governare se non solo non può fare un piano di qualunque tipo, fosse pure per un tempo breve fino al ridicolo, diciamo mille anni, ma non può garantire nemmeno il proprio domani.”
― Michail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Beh, è veramente interessante", disse il professore sobbalzando per la risata, "che qui da voi, quale che sia la cosa di cui si parli, non esista niente".”
― Michail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“I gatti che correvano qua e là intorno alla veranda avevano un'aria mattutina.”
― Michail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“Mikhaïl A. Boulgakov en a retenu un exemple très lumineux dans Le Maître et Marguerite. C'est dans ce livre que j'ai lu pour la première fois l'histoire du fléau des mouches qui ont tourmenté Jésus sur la Croix. La " tête couverte de sang et de plaies " a déjà été mille fois représentée en paroles et en peinture, mais personne n'a songé aux mouches avant Boulgakov.”
― Fritz Zorn, Mars

“Much has been written of the perceived "clash" between Islamic and western civilisations and of the need for reconciliation.... Sergei Bulgakov left a rich repository of economic thought that philosophically bridges a gap between the rationality of western market economies and the transcendent awareness of Islamic social structures. Bulgakov's philosophy of economy embraces ideas of freedom even as it recog- nises the need for "guidance" and the essential nature of economic relationships to the preservation of community. By engaging Bulgakov's economic ideas, westerners can better understand the apprehensions of intellectuals in traditional cultures concerning globalisation and the reticence of many Muslims to embrace it.”
― Charles McDaniel

“In the Russian Revolution, for example, we could expect to see mainly the reaction of the patriarchal feudal society to the challenges of modernization. However, the victory of the countryside and the peasant masses over the westernized city turned out to be a Pyrrhic one, since it threw the already backward country into the backwoods of civilization. Petlyura-style nationalism differs from European nationalism in that the latter aimed to strengthen the national state in the name of modernization and progress, while the Petlyura (and later Soviet) variety fulfilled directly opposite functions and had no constructive, civilizing content, being instead a particularly destructive phenomenon �� the expression of a nation's frustration at having failed to come together. This failure, in Bulgakov's opinion, was also due to the fact that this nation did not exist (he saw nothing in it but comical rustic bandura players and petty bourgeois who suddenly "remembered" their Ukrainian-ness and began to speak in broken Ukrainian); or else because the nation was not ready for statehood (which offered nothing except bloody pogroms); or else because its aspirations to statehood were historically and politically unjustified. Ultimately, Kiev was for Bulgakov a Russian city. Historically, it was in fact the "mother of Russian cities," the cradle of Russian state-hood, and the capital of ancient Kievan Rus. Bulgakov's refusal to recognize the rights of the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian aspirations in Kiev was even demographically justified: in 1917, more than half the population of Kiev was Russian, followed by Jews (about twenty per-cent), and only then Ukrainians (a little more than sixteen percent), with a significant Polish minority (almost a tenth of the population). But who remembers today that even Prague, for instance, was at that time a German-speaking city? In the newly proclaimed Ukrainian state, many eastern and southern cities (among them such first-rate cultural and industrial centers as Odessa, Kherson, Nikolaev, Kharkov, Iuzovka, Ekaterinoslav, and Lugansk) had never been Ukrainian at all. One should also consider that western Ukraine (the primary base of present-day Ukrainian nationalism) was once part of Poland. All of this made the aspirations toward Ukrainian "independence" highly questionable. Ukraine began where the city ended, and Bulgakov considered the city the basis of culture and civilization. Ukraine in Bulgakov's world is "the steppe" �� culturally barren, not creating anything, and capable only of barbarian destruction. The Ukrainian national elites understood this perfectly when, as early as the 1920s, they demanded that Stalin ban The Days of the Turbins because, ostensibly, "the Whites movement is praised" in it. But in fact it was because the attempt to create a Ukrainian "state" was depicted by Bulgakov as a bloody operetta.”
― Evgeny Dobrenko, The White Guard