Gorky Park Quotes
"All nights should be so dark, all winters so warm, all headlights so dazzling."
"The investigator suspected the poor dead bastards were just a vodka troika that had cheerily frozen to death."
"Vodka was liquid taxation, and the price was always rising."
"Lights appeared from the opposite side of the clearing, shadow trees sweeping the snow until two black Volgas appeared."
"The militia the police arm of the MVD directed traffic, chased drunks and picked up everyday corpses."
"The Committee for State Security the KGB was charged with grander, subtler responsibilities, combating foreign and domestic intriguers, smugglers, malcontents."
"Pribluda shouldered Arkady aside. 'When I am satisfied questions of state security are not involved, then you begin.'"
"Arkady lit a cheap Prima and filled his mouth with the powerful taste of it his habit whenever he dealt with the dead."
"Pribluda cracked open the coats of the other two bodies. 'Shot, all shot!' He exulted like a grave robber."
"The camera was foreign and developed the pictures almost instantaneously."
"The three bodies were lost in the flash's reflection from the snow."
"Arkady wasn't sure he'd heard the man correctly. Bits of ice glimmered in the air."
"The investigator thought as he watched Pribluda's cars back away from the clearing. Night creatures."
"Everything was a state industry, himself included. Even the snow flowers were starting to show at the least prompting of morning."
"Arkady collected the preliminary charts from the tables and read."
"Levin produced a feathery tuft between his fingers. 'The second male dyed his hair. Its natural color is red.'"
"Arkady leaned against a wall, smoking until he was almost dizzy, concentrating on the papers in his hands."
"Arkady waved his red ID at the militiaman directing traffic, and sped through stopped cars. A privilege of rank."
"Arkady had few illusions about his work. He was senior homicide investigator, a specialist in murder in a country that had little well-organized crime."
"Arkady resisted the temptation to run his hand over his chin."
"The general gave the faintest of nods. A colonel said, 'The general knows you are a specialist in homicides. He believes in specialization and modernization.'"
"Arkady took one long step forward to deposit his report on the desk and retreated."
"Arkady put his jacket back on. 'You know what to do, Pasha.'"
"Arkady took an office car to the Inner Circle Highway and headed north."
"Arkady was at the door when the prosecutor spoke again as an afterthought. 'All legalities will be observed.'"
"Detectives Pavlovich and Fet knocked and entered, Pasha carrying a briefcase."
"Arkady poured out two glasses of the vodka. 'Drink up.'"
"Try to be smart and you'll lose your head. But throw yourself on their breasts, say it was the vodka, it was this woman, it was a moment of madness and who knows what might happen?"
"That's his method - he never knows what he's saying. He says everything, so he has to be right some of the time."
"The truth is, in a Chekhov film you can dress the actresses in decent hats instead of scarves."
"We drink to him not because he wants our wives, because the rest of us can always masturbate if need be."
"You find her very boring. She had two or three good years when you made her interesting all by yourself. Now, even I admit it, she's boring. And you're not."
"When they do, they say, 'We can't afford it, we're too poor to buy it.' Never, 'We're not rich enough.'"
"The finest lapis lazuli came from Siberia; he'd never seen it before."
"I accept the fact that such a bizarre matter becomes grist for rumors."
"I hope I was right about your father and Mendel's being friends."
"I'm no theoretician like you. It takes a genius to know what's against the law."
"By definition, prostitutes did not exist, because prostitution has been eliminated by the Revolution."
"Love was a weed that flourished in the dark."
"The only customer was Osborne. I don't know what he had in mind."
"Some people preferred Leningrad, its canals and literary landmarks."
"Sometimes sentences seem all out of proportion to the crime."
"The sky was just lightening above the neon signs of the stations."
"The system excused, even assumed, stupidity and drunkenness, sloth and deceit."
"You find any Russian clothes here? Anyway, it's a crime to dress like you?"
"By definition, enemies of society don't have constitutional rights."
"I knew you'd say that, but it's not the case here. I'm only the instrument, he's the murderer."
"A peaceful march to City Hall was then proposed by speaker William Z. Foster."
"I prefer your counterparts from Security. At least there's honesty in slapping a woman."
"Remember what Lenin said. 'The working class is not separated from the old bourgeois society by a Chinese Wall.'"
"Frankly, if I had the mind to be an ideologist or run a ministry or know the difference between one piece of fur and another, that's what I'd be doing, wouldn't I?"
"You're an honest man, Investigator Renko," Osborne said in a voice mellowed to warmth.
"You couldn't annoy me. It occurs to me that I might be taking you away from your investigation."
"I'll be perfect." She raised the cup demurely to her lips.
"The less you say, the better off I'll be. I'm sure my imagination is adequate; I just wonder if yours is."
"That's the point. They deliberately inject it badly into the muscle so that it's not absorbed."
"Wake up. She's blind in one eye. Whoever cut the tumor cut the optic nerve and left that mark."
"Do you ever take time to think before you move? There's a certain pleasure to be found in that."
"I didn't tell the bitch. She'd want me to go because she thinks she'll get my pension."
"Everything going to seed. Dung beetles. Rotting."
"If they didn't know you were here before, they must have been listening to my phone and so they know now."
"It doesn't matter how ridiculous a lie is if the lie is your only chance of escape."
"It doesn't matter how obvious the truth is if the truth is that you'll never escape."
"You're going to try to arrest me? Stop you," Arkady said. "Keep you off your plane, to begin with."
"I'll tell you when I knew you were for real," Kirwill said.
"Life is always more complicated and simpler than we give it credit for," Osborne said.
"We're old friends," Nikitin said. "I'm your friend."
"The earth. The ground is like a drum. It's true you can hear it."
"This is peasant science. Hear the earth? You can hear how dry its throat is."
"You thought you cosmopolitans knew everything."
"The judge said we should give it another go. She said nothing was final if I changed my mind."
"You don't wish me ill? Look at what you've done to me."
"We just had marital troubles. I was not understanding enough."
"Ordinary life was an endless queue of backs, of the next man's breath."
"The fire was unpredictable. One bush would catch slowly like a biscuit of fuses; another would erupt whole into a torch."
"The peat fields were too immense, and firebreaks were useless against an enemy that attacked underground."
"I'm not so dumb as to wait and fry, I'll tell you that. I'm no coward."
"I want definite written instructions. I'm not a killer. I'm as human as you are."
"You're only one man, one investigator, and not even an important one."
"You have new visitors," another told Pribluda. "There's been a change."
"You're not going to defect. If this were a KGB operation, then you could defect."
"You're not here legally. You're not here illegally either, because then you'd have a leg to stand on. You're simply not here at all."
"The political climate'll fuck you every time," George said.
"I understand. And you think I'm with the KGB because they say I'm not."
"No matter what, he is still a criminal and they are an organ of justice."
"There's no book in New York. If a diplomat hits your car, shoots your dog, rapes your wife, he goes home quietly."
"Driving through a strange city at night, his imagination filled in what wasn't seen."
"The lie came without hesitation, as if from another set of nerves and another, glibber mouth."
"Lower Manhattan's public buildings were a nighttime collection of Roman, colonial and modern architecture."
"They don't know their clients until they come through these doors."
"You can look at it as a bond, or a loan, or a tax."
"What's the sharp and nasty, smooth and greasy, barbed and two-pronged fucking point?"
"Renko, you have nothing to lose, and God knows, I don't."
"The stars only interest us because they're so far away."
"Our Soviet murders are secret, we're backward in terms of publicity."
"We love it. The number one cause of death for young men in America is murder."
"They're the truth about a new kind of Russian."
"What are we arguing for? Then let me do it for you. We're friends."
"It's against the law to buy booze from a deli."
"I'm Russian. The longer I'm here, the more Russian I am."