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“...he was dimly aware that if you wish to remain a human being under Fascism, there is an easier option than survival -- death.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“He was telling her here, in this cellar, as he kissed her feet, he had understood love for the first time - not just from other people's words, but in his heart, in his blood. She was dearer to him than all his past, dearer to him than his mother, than Germany, than his future with Maria... He had fallen in love with her. Great walls raised up by states, racist fury, the heavy artillery and its curtain of fire were all equally insignificant, equally powerless in the face of love.. He gave thanks to fate for allowing him to understand this before he died.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“He walked on down the dark, empty street. Suddenly an idea came to him. Immediately, with his whole being, he knew it was true. He had glimpsed a new and improbable explanation for the atomic phenomena that up until now had seemed so hopelessly inexplicable; abysses had suddenly changed into bridges. What clarity and simplicity! This idea was astonishingly graceful and beautiful. It seemed to have given birth to itself �� like a white water-lily appearing out of the calm darkness of a lake. He gasped, reveling in its beauty��
And how strange, he thought suddenly, that this idea should have come to him when his mind was far away from anything to do with science, when the discussions that so excited him were those of free men, when his words and the words of his friends had been determined only by freedom, by bitter freedom.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“An electronic machine can carry out mathematical calculations, remember historical facts, play chess and translate books from one language to another. It is able to solve mathematical problems more quickly than man and its memory is faultless. Is there any limit to progress, to its ability to create machines in the image and likeness of man? It seems the answer is no.

It is not impossible to imagine the machine of future ages and millennia. It will be able to listen to music and appreciate art; it will even be able to compose melodies, paint pictures and write poems. Is there a limit to its perfection? Can it be compared to man? Will it surpass him?

Childhood memories�� tears of happiness �� the bitterness of parting�� love of freedom �� feelings of pity for a sick puppy �� nervousness �� a mother’s tenderness �� thoughts of death �� sadness �� friendship �� love of the weak �� sudden hope �� a fortunate guess �� melancholy �� unreasoning joy �� sudden embarrassment��

The machine will be able to recreate all of this! But the surface of the whole earth will be too small to accommodate this machine �� this machine whose dimensions and weight will continually increase as it attempts to reproduce the peculiarities of mind and soul of an average, inconspicuous human being.

Fascism annihilated tens of millions of people.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“And in this silence of the dumb and these speeches of the blind, in this medley of people bound together by the same grief, terror and hope, in this hatred and lack of understanding between men who spoke the same tongue, you could see much of the tragedy of the twentieth century.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate (Vintage Classic Russians Series): **AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4**

“When people are to be slaughtered en masse, the local population is not immediately gripped by a bloodthirsty hatred of the old men, women and children who are to be destroyed. It is necessary to prepare the population by means of a special campaign. And in this case it is not enough to rely merely on the instinct for self-preservation; it is necessary to stir up feelings of real hatred and revulsion.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“life can be defined as freedom. Life is freedom. Freedom is the fundamental principle of life. That is the boundary �� between freedom and slavery, between inanimate matter and life.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“Each wave breaking against the cliff would believe it was dying for the good of the sea; it would never occur to it that, like thousands of waves before and after, it had only been brought into being by the wind.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“The labour of those who enjoy the confidence of the Party is imperceptible. But it is a vast labour �� one must expend one’s mind and soul generously, keeping nothing back.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“Fascism will perish for the very reason that it has applied to man the laws applicable to atoms and cobblestones!”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“Все люди виноваты перед матерью, потерявшей на войне сына, и тщетно
пробуют оправдаться перед ней на протяжении истории человечества.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“Everything that lives is unique. It is unimaginable that two people, or two briar-roses, should be identical . . . If you attempt to erase the peculiarities and individuality of life by violence, then life itself must suffocate.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“- Buena es la verdad, mejor es el amor”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“Así es el tiempo: todo pasa, sólo él permanece. Todo permanece, sólo el tiempo pasa. ¡Qué ligero se va, sin hacer ruido! Ayer mismo todavía confiabas en ti, alegre, rebosante de fuerzas, hijo del tiempo. Y hoy ha llegado un nuevo tiempo, pero tú, tú no te has dado cuenta.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“It was good to emerge from this silent semi-darkness into a bright glade. Suddenly everything was different: the earth was warm; the air was in movement; you could smell the junipers in the sun; there were large, wilting bluebells which looked as though they had been cast from mauve-coloured metal, and wild carnations on sticky, resinous stems. You felt suddenly carefree; the glade was like one happy day in a life of poverty. The lemon-coloured butterflies, the polished, blue-black beetles, the ants, the grass-snake rustling through the grass, seemed to be joining together in a common task. Birch-twigs, sprinkled with fine leaves, brushed against his face; a grasshopper jumped up and landed on him as though he were a tree-trunk; it clung to his belt, calmly tensing its green haunches as it sat there with its round, leathery eyes and sheep-like face. The last flowers of the wild strawberries. The heat of the sun on his metal buttons and belt-clasp . . . No U-88 or night-flying Heinkel could ever have flown over this glade.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“The magic of the revolution had joined with people's fear of death, their horror of torture, their anguish when the first breath of the camps blew on their faces.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“The hide was being flayed off the still living body of the Revolution so that a new age could slip in to it; as for the red bloody meat, the steaming innards - they were being thrown onto the scrapheap. The new age needed only the hide of the Revolution - and this was being flayed off people who were still alive. Those who slipped into it spoke the language of the Revolution and mimicked it's gestures, but their brains, lungs, livers and eyes were utterly different.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“Breathing heavily, Major-General Gudz was making his way towards Mostovskoy. He shuffled along, wheezing and sticking out his lower lip; folds of loose skin rippled over his cheeks and neck. At one time he had been impressively stout, and these sounds and movements were all that remained; now they seemed quite bizarre.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“To Polyakov it was as though a fierce wind from downstream was sweeping up the Volga. Several times he was knocked off his feet; he fell to the ground no longer knowing what world he lived in, whether he was old or young, what was up and what was down. But Klimov dragged him along and finally they slid to the bottom of a huge crater. Here the darkness was threefold: the darkness of night, the darkness of dust and smoke, the darkness of a deep pit.
They lay there beside one another; the same soft light, the same prayer for life filled both their heads. It was the same light, the same touching hope that glows in all heads and all hearts �� in those of birds and animals as well as in those of human beings.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“Jenny lacked any sense of property - she was constantly apologising to Yevgenia and asking for her permission to open the small upper window in order to let in her elderly tabby cat. Her main interests and worries centered around this cat and how to protect it from her neighbors... She fed her own rations to the cat, whom she called 'my dear, silver child' The cat adored her; he was a rough sullen beast, but would become suddenly animated and affectionate when he saw her.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“Both his voice and eyes had the burning cold of alcohol. His strength no longer lay in his military experience or his knowledge of the map, but in his harsh, impetuous soul.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“I thought that good was to be found neither in man, nor in the predatory world of animals and insects, but in the silent kingdom of the trees. Far from it! I saw the forest’s slow movements, the treacherous way it battled against grass and bushes for each inch of soil. First, billions of seeds fly through the air and begin to sprout, destroying grass and bushes. Then millions of victorious shoots wage war against one another. And it is only the survivors who enter into an alliance of equals to form the seamless canopy of the young deciduous forest. Beneath this canopy the spruces and beeches freeze to death in the twilight of penal servitude.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“Zhenevyeva, we often make fun of intellectuals for their doubts, their split personalities, their Hamlet-like indecisiveness. When I was young I despised that side of myself. Now, though, I’ve changed my mind: humanity owes many great books and great discoveries to people who were indecisive and full of doubts; they have achieved at least as much as the simpletons who never hesitate. And when it comes to the crunch, they too are prepared to go to the stake; they stand just as firm under fire as the people who are always strong-willed and resolute.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate (Vintage Classic Russians Series): **AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4**

“What constitutes the freedom, the soul of an individual life, is its uniqueness. The reflection of the universe in someone’s consciousness is the foundation of his or her power, but life only becomes happiness, is only endowed with freedom and meaning when someone exists as a whole world that has never been repeated in all eternity. Only then can they experience the joy of freedom and kindness, finding in others what they have already found in themselves.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate (Vintage Classic Russians Series): **AS HEARD ON BBC RADIO 4**

“Nuestro honorable sargento dominaba todas las lenguas, excepto las extranjeras.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“The snow here hadn’t thawed. Its large, rough crystals were filled with the blue of the lake-water. But on the sunny side of the hill the snow was just beginning to melt. The ditch beside the path was full of gurgling water. The glitter of the snow, the water and the ice on the puddles was quite blinding. There was so much light, it was so intense, that they seemed almost to have to force their way through it. It disturbed them and got in their way; when they stepped on the thin film of ice over the puddles, it seemed to be light that was crunching under their feet, breaking up into thin, splinter-like rays. And it was light that was flowing down the ditch beside the path; where the path was blocked by stones, the light swelled up, foaming and gurgling. The spring sun seemed to be closer to the earth than ever. The air was cool and warm at the same time.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“What was all this? He knew only too well. The statistical method! Probability theory! There was a greater probability of finding enemies among people of a non-proletarian background. And it was on these same grounds �� probability theory �� that the German Fascists had destroyed whole peoples and nations. The principle was inhuman, blind and inhuman. There was only one acceptable way of relating to people �� a human way.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“Her grief was the same grief that breathed on this deck, a grief that had always known the way from the military hospitals and graves of the front back to the huts of peasants, huts without numbers standing on patches of waste ground without a name.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“Shargorodsky was a very gentle man, and quite helpless in any practical matter. He was the sort of man about whom people say, ‘He’s got the soul of a child,�� or ‘He’s as kind as an angel.�� And yet he could walk straight past a hungry child or a ragged old woman begging for crusts, feeling quite indifferent, still muttering his favourite lines of poetry.”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

“He heard a faint cry from the area of the factories, a cry that was almost drowned by the shell-bursts and gunfire: ‘A-a-a-a-a-h!�� There was something terrible, but also something sad and melancholy in this long cry uttered by the Russian infantry as they staged an attack. As it crossed the cold water, it lost its fervour. Instead of valour or gallantry, you could hear the sadness of a soul parting with everything that it loved, calling on its nearest and dearest to wake up, to lift their heads from their pillows and hear for the last time the voice of a father, a husband, a son or a brother . . .”
― Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate