38 Quotes by Andrei Platonov

The watchman smoked and calmly looked into the distance. He did not believe in God after so many worship services, but he knew for certain that nothing would come of Zakhar Pavlovich's work. People have been living in the world for a long time and have already invented everything. However, Zakhar Pavlovich thought just the opposite: as long as any natural raw material goes untouched by human hands, people are far from having invented everything.

O masses, o masses! When will you assume the image and likeness of your avant-garde?

Everything in the existing world seemed strange to him; it was as if the world had been created for some brief, mocking game. But this game of make-believe had dragged on for a long time,for eternity, and nobody felt like laughing anymore.

Inside every poor creature was a sense of some other happy destiny, a destiny that was necessary and inevitable -why, then, did they find their lives such a burden and why were they always waiting for something?

He walked then with the same heart as those peasants who walk to Kiev after their faith has run dry and their life has turned into simply living it out.

Nikita uzun süre tek başına dikildi karanlık odada, başkasının elemine engel olmaya utanıyordu. Lyuba onunla ilgilenmiyordu, çünkü kendi acısından duyduğu keder insanı bütün diğer acı çekenlere karşı duyarsızlaştırır. Nikita izin almadan yatağa, Lyuba'nın ayakucuna oturdu, francalaları koynundan çıkardı, bir yerlere sokuşturmak istiyordu, ama şimdilik bir yer bulabilmiş değildi.(Potudan Nehri / Dönüş)

Then she would wander through fields, over simple, poor land, looking carefully and keenly all round her, still getting used to being alive in the world, and feeling glad that everything in it was right for her — for her body, her heart, and her freedom.

Everything comes to an end, only objects are left to pine in the dark.

What he would have liked, without admitting it, was for the whole world, forever under construction yet never constructed, to be like his own destroyed life.