16 Quotes by Isaac Babel

A well-thought-out story doesn’t need to resemble real life. Life itself tries with all its might to resemble a well-crafted story.

No iron can stab the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place.

Even at the time—twenty years old—I said to myself: better to go hungry, to go to prison, to be a tramp, than to sit at an office desk ten hours a day. There is no particular daring in this vow, but I have not broken it and shall not do so. The wisdom of my grandfathers sat in my head: we are born for the pleasure of work, fighting, love, we are born for that and nothing else. (Guy de Maupassant)

No iron can pierce the human heart as chillingly as a full stop placed at the right time.

Она читала, далеко отставив от себя книгу: упавшая на стол рука казалась неживой.

Just forget for a minute that you have spectacles on your nose and autumn in your heart. Stop being tough at your desk and stammering with timidity in the presence of people. Imagine for one second that you raise hell in public and stammer on paper. You’re a tiger, a lion, a cat. You spend a night with a Russian woman and leave her satisfied. You’re twenty five. If rings had been fastened to the earth and sky, you’d have seized them and pulled the sky down to earth

Она увозила с собой воспоминания, не отягчавшие совести, и колье, выбранное со вкусом и стоившее не очень дорого.

Павлин на плече Ивана Никодимыча уходил последним. Он сидел, как солнце в сыром осеннем небе, онсидел, как сидит июль на розовом берегу реки, раскалённый июль в длиннойхолодной траве.

If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy.