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“Don't you remember how you once answered a question of mine? Me - I shall never forget your words. Those words of yours opened my eyes; they brought me the light of day. I asked you how the Germans could send Jewish children to die in the gas chambers. How, I asked, could they live with themselves after that? Was there really no judgement passed on them by man or God? And you said: Only one judgement is passed on the executioner - he ceases to be a human being. Through looking on his victim as less than human, he becomes his own executioner, he executes the human being inside himself. But the victim - no matter what the executioner does to kill him - remains a human being forever. Remember now?”
― Vasily Grossman, Forever Flowing

“Ivan tells Anna: "I used to imagine that being embraced by a woman . . . as something so wonderful that it would make me forget everthing . . . [But] happiness, it turns out, will be to share with you the burden I can't share with anyone else.”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows

“I used to think freedom was freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of conscience. But freedom is the whole life of everyone. Here is what it amounts to: you have to have the right to sow what you wish to, to make shoes or coats, to bake into bread the flour ground from the grain you have sown, and to sell it or not sell it as you wish; for the lathe operator, the steelworker, and the artist it’s a matter of being able to live as you wish and work as you wish and not as they order you to. And in our country there is no freedom â€� not for those who write books nor for those who sow grain nor for those who make shoes.â€� (Grossman, p. 99) He noted that “In people’s day-to-day struggle to live, in the extreme efforts workers put forth to earn an extra ruble through moonlighting, in the collective farmersâ€� battle for bread and potatoes as the one and only fruit of their labor, he [Ivan Grigoryevich] could sense more than the desire to live better, to fill one’s children’s stomachs and to clothe them. In the battle for the right to make shoes, to knit sweaters, in the struggle to plant what one wished, was manifested the natural, indestructible striving toward freedom inherent in human nature. He had seen this very same struggle in the people in camp. Freedom, it seemed, was immortal on both sides of the barbed wire.â€� (Grossman, p. 110)”
― Vasily Grossman, Forever Flowing

“The history of humanity is the history of human freedom...Freedom is not, as Engels thought, "the recognition of necessity." Freedom is the opposite of necessity. Freedom is necessity overcome. Progress is, in essence, the progress of human freedom. Yes, and after all, life itself is freedom. The evolution of life is the evolution of freedom.”
― Vasily Grossman, Forever Flowing

“The sea was not freedom; it was a likeness of freedom, a symbol of freedom...How splendid freedom must be if a mere likeness of it, a mere reminder of it, is enough to fill a man with happiness.”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows

“The State became the master. The national element moved from the realm of form to the realm of content; it became what was most central and essential, turning the socialist element into a mere wrapping, a verbal husk, an empty shell. Thus was made manifest, with tragic clarity, a sacred law of life: Human freedom stands above everything. There is no end in the world for the sake of which it is permissible to sacrifice human freedom.”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows

“Freedom is the direct opposite of necessity; freedom is necessity overcome.”
― Vasily Grossman, Forever Flowing

“Time worked unhurriedly, conscientiously. First the man was expelled from life, to reside instead in people's memories. Then he lost his right to residence in people's memories, sinking down into their subconscious minds and jumping out at someone only occasionally, like a jack-in-the-box, frightening them with the unexpectedness of his sudden, momentary appearances.”
― Vasily Grossman, Forever Flowing

“The law fights against life, and life fights against the law.”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows

“Here in the forest lay sullen, soot-blackened stones that were the remains of ruined hearths; in abandoned cemeteries were dark headstones that had already half sunk into the ground. Everything inanimate—stones, iron—was being swallowed by the earth, dissolving into it with the years, while green, vegetable life, in contrast, was bursting up from the earth. The boy found the silence over the cold hearths especially painful. And when he came back home, the smell of smoke from the kitchen, the barking of dogs, and the cackling of hens somehow seemed all the sweeter.”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows

“No artist has painted
A true portrait of Lenin
Ages to come will complete
Lenin's unfinished portrait.

Did Poletaev understand the tragic implication of his lines about Lenin?”
― Vasily Grossman, Forever Flowing

“I asked you how the Germans could send Jewish children to die in the gas chambers. How, I asked, could they live with themselves after that? Was there really no judgement passed on them by man or God? And you said: Only one judgement is passed on the executioner â€� he ceases to be a human being. Through looking on his victim as less than human, he becomes his own executioner; he executes the human being inside himself. But the victim â€� no matter what the executioner does to kill him â€� remains a human being forever”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows

“One objective fact is that in 1939 there were 28 million Ukrainians, compared with 31 million in 1926, at a time when (barring famine) the birth rate was often twice the death rate. Deaths are calculated on this basis at anywhere between 2.4 and 4 million. More sophisticated studies give a figure nearer to 5 million. OGPU’s tally from December 1932 to mid-April 1933 give a figure of 2.4 million deaths from famine and cannibalism; by extrapolating these”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows

“Era hermosa porque era buena. La cogió de la mano. Ella se acostó a su lado y él sintió su calor, sintió su tierno pecho, los hombros, el cabello. Le parecía sentir todo aquello no despierto sino en sueños: despierto, nunca había sido feliz.”
― Vasily Grossman, Forever Flowing

“Villages that had been groaning beneath the iron weight of Stalin’s hand breathed a sigh of relief. And the many millions confined in the camps rejoiced. Columns of prisoners were marching to work in deep darkness. The barking of guard dogs drowned out their voices. And suddenly, as if the northern lights had flashed the words through their ranks: “Stalin has died.â€� As they marched on under guard, tens of thousands of prisoners passed the news on in a whisper: “He’s croaked...he’s croaked...â€� Repeated by thousand upon thousand of people, this whisper was like a wind. Over the polar lands it was still black night. But the ice in the Arctic Ocean had broken; you could now hear the roar of an ocean of voices.”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows

“There was bread enough for us in the army, on the front line. We were fed by the Russian people. And no one had to teach them how to do it.â€� “You’re right there,â€� said the economist. “What matters is that we’re Russians. Yes, Russians—that’s quite something.â€� The inspector smiled and winked at his companion. It was as if he were saying those well-known words: “The Russian is the elder brother, the first among equals.”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows

“The Russian earth is indeed fertile and generous. She gives birth to her own Platos, to her own quick-witted Newtons—but how casually and terribly she devours these children of hers.”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows

“He was able to sleep on bare boards; he drank plain hot water with neither tea nor sugar; he ate stale bread; he wore footcloths rather than socks. He had no bed linen, but she noticed that his shirt collar was always clean, even though the shirt had been washed so many times that it had gone yellow. And in the mornings he always took out a chipped, battered little box that had once contained fruit drops and that now contained his washing things; he would brush his teeth and carefully soap his face, his neck, and his arms up to his elbows.”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows

“During the thousand years of her history Russia had seen many great things. During the Soviet period the country had seen global military victories, vast construction sites, whole new cities, dams across the Dnieper and the Volga, canals joining different seas. The country had seen mighty tractors and skyscrapers...There was only one thing Russia had not seen during this thousand years: freedom.”
― Vasily Grossman, Forever Flowing

“La historia de la humanidad es la historia de su libertad [...] El progreso es, en esencia, progreso de la libertad humana.”
― Vasili Grossman, Todo fluye

“Stalin’s hatred for the Old Bolsheviks who opposed him was also a hatred for those aspects of Lenin’s character that contradicted what was most essential in Lenin.”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows

“Grigoryevich...Not that he had any real talent himself—but what a lot of deaths of talented people he had witnessed. Young physicists and historians, specialists in ancient languages, philosophers, musicians, young Russian Swifts and Erasmuses—how many of them he had seen put on their “wooden jackets.â€� Prerevolutionary literature had often lamented the fate of serf actors, musicians, and painters. But who was there today to write about the young men and women who had never had the chance to write their books and paint their paintings? The Russian earth is indeed fertile and generous. She gives birth to her own Platos, to her own quick-witted Newtons—but how casually and terribly she devours these children of hers.”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows

“Freedom is the right to sow what you want. It’s the right to make boots or shoes, it’s the right to bake bread from the grain you’ve sown and to sell it or not sell it as you choose. It’s the same whether you’re a locksmith or a steelworker or an artist—freedom is the right to live and work as you wish and not as you’re ordered to. But there’s no freedom for anyone—whether you write books, whether you sow grain, or whether you make boots.â€� That night Ivan Grigoryevich lay”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows

“During the course of his life, dozens of interrogators had understood that he was neither a monarchist, nor a Socialist Revolutionary, nor a Social Democrat; that he had never been part of either the Trotskyist or the Bukharinist opposition. He had never been an Orthodox Christian or an Old Believer; nor was he a Seventh-Day Adventist.”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows

“Informers and stool pigeons are full of virtue, they should all be released and sent home—but how vile they are! Vile for all their virtues, vile even with all their sins absolved...Who was it who made that cruel joke about the proud sound made by the word “Manâ€�?”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows

“The country had seen mighty tractors and skyscrapers...There was only one thing Russia had not seen during this thousand years: freedom.”
― Vasily Grossman, Everything Flows

“And this man, who during three long decades had not once remembered that the world contains lilac bushes - and pansies, sandy garden paths, little carts with containers of fizzy water - this man gave a deep sigh, convinced now that life had gone on in his absence, that life had continued.”
― Vasily Grossman, Forever Flowing

“While they were still transporting the grain, there was dust wherever you went. It was like clouds of smoke—over the village, over the fields, over the face of the moon at night. I remember one man going out of his mind. 'We're on fire!' he kept screaming. 'The sky is burning! The earth is burning!' No, it was not the sky—it was life itself that was burning.”
― Vasily Grossman, Forever Flowing

“Every starving man dies in his own way. In one hut they're at war, checking on one another, keeping watch on one another, stealing crumbs from one another. Wife against husband; husband against wife. The mother hates her children. But in another hut they live in indestructible love. I knew one woman with four children. She could hardly move her tongue, but she kept telling them fairy tales to try to make them forget their hunger. She hardly had the strength even to lift her own arms, yet she held her children in them. Love lived on in her. Where there was hate, it seemed people died more quickly. But love, for that matter, did not save anyone. Every last person lay down and died. There was no life left.”
― Vasily Grossman, Forever Flowing

“Without a word of reproach, Ivan Grigoryevich looked with alert, sad curiosity into Pinegin's eyes. And just for one second—but not for two—Pinegin felt that he could sacrifice everything.
He could sacrifice his decorations and honors, his dacha, his position of power and authority, his beautiful wife, his brilliant sons now studying nuclear physics—anything not to sense the look of those eyes on him.

'Well, Pinegin, all the best!' said Ivan. And he walked off toward the railway station.”
― Vasily Grossman, Forever Flowing