14 Quotes by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

...as I was sifting through a heap of old and new "identity cards," I noticed that something was missing: my identity.

Hiding my half existence behind the opaque walls of my skull, concealing it like a shameful disease, I did not consider the simple fact that the same thing could be occurring under other skullcaps, in other locked rooms.

People are ignorant of what any street clock knows. Why? Because the crack that cleaves existence also swallows their existence-reflecting consciousnesses. Thrown back into existence, the poor souls don't suspect that a moment ago they didn't exist - and only isolated things and persons, swallowed by the crack never to return to this world, arouse a certain fear and foreboding.

In short, you had that particular ability which I never had: the ability to be alive.

But it's fair to say that the war's [WWI] dialectic forced those who were more or less alive to go to their death, and gave those who were more or less dead the right to live. And if the war managed only to separate the living from the dead, then the new regime, arriving in its wake, would sooner or later pit them against each other as enemies.

When the Thinker placed a clean sheet of paper before the Thought, it jumped back: "I won't be put into letters!" But the old man went about his business. The struggle was brief, albeit hard-fought.

Glory to the unwakeable.

ДА ЗДРАВСТВУЕТ ВЛАСТЬ СОВЕТОВ! ДА ЗДРАВСТВУЕТ ГИБЕЛЬ КАПИТАЛИЗМА!

A dingily bilious sun was seeping through a tent of black clouds. Passersby, spitefully elbowing elbows, were rushing along the pavement. People thronging the doorways of shops tried to pummel their way through and stuck fast, their faces flushed with spite and fury, their teeth bared.