Quotes by Tatyana Tolstaya

You read, move your lips, figure out the words, and its like youre in two places at the same time: youre sitting or lying with your legs curled up, your hand groping in the bowl, but you can see different worlds, far-off worlds that maybe never existed but still seem real. You run or sail or race in a sleigh--youre running away from someone, or you yourself have decided to attack--your heart thumps, life flies by, and its wondrous: you can live as many different lives as there are books to read.

Dostoyevskys indignation at Afanasy Fets innocent lyrics, Whispers, timid breath, the nightingales trilled, is well known. This is simply disgraceful, wrote Dostoyevsky indignantly, and he speculated what an insulting impression such empty verses would have made if theyd been given to someone to read during the Lisbon earthquake! Some people protested: Yes, of course, Dostoyevsky is right, but we arent having an earthquake, and we arent in Lisbon, and after all, are we not allowed to love, to listen to nightingales, to admire the beauty of a beloved woman? But Dostoyevskys argument held sway for a long time. It did so because of the way Russians perceive Russian life: as a constant, unending Lisbon earthquake.

If you have to be careful because of oppression and censorship this pressure produces diamonds.

I dont think people are fools, and I think they deserve a good attitude and smart entertainment.

Politics disappears it vanishes. What remains constant is human life. So I try to develop a perspective in my writing where politics is just one of the pieces of furniture in this furnished world. It is not the purpose. It is not the goal.