Vita Nostra

Marina Dyachenko

Top 10 Best Quotes

“To live is to be vulnerable. A thin membrane of a soap bubble separates one from impenetrable hell. Ice on the road. The unlucky division of an aging cell. A child picks up a pill from the floor. Words stick to each other, line up, obedient to the great harmony of speech...”

“There are concepts that cannot be imagined but can be named. Having received a name, they change, flow into a different entity, and cease to correspond to the name, and then they can be given another, different name, and this process—the spellbinding process of creation—is infinite: this is the word that names it, and this is the word that signifies. A concept as an organism, and text as the universe.”

“I’m serious, Sasha: what is so important about being human? Is it because you simply haven’t experienced anything else?”

“Sasha, the world is full of entities that people cannot negotiate with. But somehow people survive, don’t they?”

“By verbally identifying an object, by giving it a name, we alter it. And at the same time we prevent it from changing. A name is like a forked stick that we use to hold a snake on the ground.”

“But no one had ever been saved by memories, no one had been protected by words and pledges, and those loved greatly by others died too.”

“There are words that are simply trash, refuse, they turn into nothing immediately after they are spoken. Others throw shadows, hideous and pathetic, and sometimes gorgeous and powerful, capable of saving a dying soul. But only a few of these words become human beings and pronounce other words. And everyone in the world has a chance of encountering someone whom he himself spoke out loud . . .”

“This institution of higher education had no such concept as mercy.”

“The world, as you see it, is not real. And the way you imagine it—it does not even come close. Certain things seem obvious to you, but they simply do not exist.” “And you, do you not exist?” Sasha couldn’t help herself. “Are you not real?” Portnov removed the scarf from her face. Under his gaze, she blinked confusedly. “I exist,” he said seriously. “But I am not at all what you think.”

“What a depressing way to go through life, hoping for ideas.”

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Book Keywords:

humanity, illusion, survival, fragile, experience, higher-education, death, words, merciless, life, being-human, existence, mercy, negotiation