A Swim In A Pond In The Rain: In Which Four Russians Give A Master Class On Writing, Reading, And Life Quotes
"Art doesn’t have to solve problems, it only has to formulate them correctly."
"What a story is: a limited set of elements that we read against one another."
"A story is not just a series of events, one following after another. It’s a narrative that compels us to finish reading it."
"Art moves us by being honest and that honesty is apparent in its language and its form and in its resistance to concealment."
"The world is full of people with agendas, trying to persuade us to act on their behalf. But inside us is a 'built-in, shockproof, shit detector.'"
"A good work of art...is like a table with just a few things on it. The 'meaning' of the table is made by the choice of things and their relation to one another."
"A work of art moves us by being honest and that honesty is apparent in its language and its form and in its resistance to concealment."
"No worthy problem is ever solved in the plane of its original conception."
"Every aspect of every frame has been carefully considered and lovingly used, and this is part of the reason the sequence moved them the first time they watched it."
"The true beauty of a story is not in its apparent conclusion but in the alteration in the mind of the reader that has occurred along the way."
"He was simply trying to nip in the bud anything that might disturb his peace of mind."
"Rowdy drunkards are afraid of her; she dislikes them, for there is little profit and a lot of noise from them."
"The sun was blazing away in the sky with a kind of fury."
"The moment I crossed the threshold the sensation of closeness and sultriness fell from my shoulders like a heavy load."
"We have to find another approach, one that will get us up above the required 1,000 units."
"If people out in the hall were laughing at you, you’d feel: 'Okay, sure, laugh away—my dancing is not perfect, but at least I’m not dead.'"
"We have to take whatever beauty we can get, however we can get it."
"What we have to do at that point, I think, is go over, sheepishly but boldly, and stand on our shit-hill, and hope it will grow."
"We know that no matter how the Russians did it, we’re each going to have to find our own way."
"The actual process, in my experience, is much more mysterious and beautiful and more of a pain in the ass to discuss truthfully."
"All art begins in that instant of intuitive preference."
"The beauty of this method is that it doesn’t really matter what you start with."
"When I write, 'Bob was an asshole' and then revise it to, 'Bob snapped impatiently at the young barista,' the text becomes more 'alert to Bob.'"
"A story is a frank, intimate conversation between equals."
"The reader is out there, and she's real. She's interested in life and, by picking up our work, has given us the benefit of the doubt."
"We don’t see or hear all that might be seen or heard but only that which is helpful for us to see and hear."
"In every instant, a delusional gulf gets created between things as we think they are and things as they actually are."
"Evil and dysfunction occur in proportion to how solidly a person believes that his projections are correct."
"I won’t have any coffee today, Praskovya Osipovna. Instead, I would like to eat a bit of hot bread with onion."
"Solid!" he said to himself. "What could it be?"
"The devil knows how it happened," he said at last, scratching behind his ear.
"I am ready to shave your worship twice a week, or even three times, and no complaints," replied Ivan Yakovlevich.
"Honestly, sir, I’ve been to shave someone and only looked to see if the river were running fast."
"You just ask, lovey, for Major Kovalyov’s apartment."
"But perhaps I just imagined all this—a nose cannot disappear in this idiotic way."
"Damnation! How disgusting!" he exclaimed after spitting. "If at least there were something in place of the nose, but there’s nothing!"
"Well, thank God, there is no one here," said the Major. "Now I can have a look."
"Indeed, how could a nose which as recently as yesterday had been on his face and could neither ride nor walk—how could it be in uniform?"