Yevgeny Zamyatin: How do you know that nonsense isn't a good thing? If...

We need writers who fear nothing. ("Our Goal")

Yevgeny Zamyatin

fear-nothing goal needs

I've read and heard a lot of unbelievable stuff about those times when people lived in freedom -- that is, in disorganized wildness.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

freedom stuff people

Is it not clear, however, that bliss and envy are the numerator and denominator of the fraction called happiness?

Yevgeny Zamyatin

bliss envy happiness

Crossing out is an art that is, perhaps, even more difficult than writing. It requires the sharpest eye to decide what is superfluous and must be removed. And it requires ruthlessness toward yourself -- the greatest ruthlessness and self-sacrifice. You must know how to sacrifice parts in the name of the whole.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

writing inspirational art

I am like a machine being driven to excessive rotations: the bearings are incandescing and, in a minute, melted metal will begin to drip and everything will turn to nothing. Quick: get cold water, logic. I am pouring it over myself by the bucketload but the logic sizzles on the hot bearings and dissipates elusive white steam into the air.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

air white water

Explosions are not comfortable.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

explosions comfortable preparation

Literature is painting, architecture, and music.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

painting architecture literature

Love and hunger rule the world. Ergo, to rule the world, one must master love and hunger.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

hunger masters world

The moon, our own, earthly moon is bitterly lonely, because it is alone in the sky, always alone, and there is no one to turn to, no one to turn to it. All it can do is ache across the weightless airy ice, across thousands of versts, toward those who are equally lonely on earth, and listen to the endless howling of dogs. (“A Story About The Most Important Thing”)

Yevgeny Zamyatin

lonely moon dog

I am aware of myself. And, of course, the only things that are aware of themselves and conscious of their individuality are irritated eyes, cut fingers, sore teeth. A healthy eye, finger, tooth might as well not even be there. Isn't it clear that individual consciousness is just sickness?

Yevgeny Zamyatin

cutting healthy eye

Now I no longer live in our clear, rational world; I live in the ancient nightmare world, the world of square roots of minus one.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

squares roots world

All of life in its complexity and beauty is forever minted in the gold of words.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

complexity gold forever

There is an excellent way to make predictions without the slightest risk of error: predict the past.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

inspirational past art

The speed of her tongue is not correctly calculated; the speed per second of her toungue should be slightly less than the speed per second of her thoughts -at any rate not the reverse.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

tongue speed should

An error is more useful than truth: truth is a thought suffering from arteriosclerosis.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

truth inspirational art

And tomorrow--who knows what happens? Do you get it? I don't know and no one knows--it's all unknown! You understand, that this is the end to the Known? This is the new, the improbable, the unpredictable.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

unpredictable tomorrow ends

What we need in literature today are vast philosophic horizons... we need the most ultimate, the most fearsome, the most fearless "Why?" and "What next?".

Yevgeny Zamyatin

fearless inspirational art

The highly complex, almost mathematical, nature of music creates for it an ironclad protection against the microbes of dilletantism, which penetrate much more easily into the fields of painting, literature, and the theater.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

literature inspirational art

The latest literary discussions reflect a struggle between two artistic methods - romanticism and realism, with the latter clearly ascendant for the time being.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

struggle inspirational art

We appeal, not to those who reject today in the name of a return to yesterday, not to those who are hopelessly deafened by today; we appeal to those who see the distant tomorrow -- and judge today in the name of tomorrow.

Yevgeny Zamyatin

judging names yesterday

How do you know that nonsense isn't a good thing? If human nonsense had been nurtured and developed for centuries, just as intelligence has, then perhaps something extraordinarily precious could have come from it.