Andrei Platonov

“I want my word to be up to the scale of the feat of arms performed by the Russian soldier.”

“If kids can forget their own mothers but still have a sense of comrade Lenin, then Soviet power really is here to stay!”

“From our ugliness will grow the soul of the world.”

“A man who's never seen war is like a woman who's never given birth - soft in the head.”

“The working class is my home country, and my future is linked with the proletariat.”

“When you've nothing to live for, you get to thinking inside your head.”

“I have a trend of my own.”

“We hate our squalor.”

“If they don't think, people act senselessly.”

“What if we all suddenly get carried away thinking - who will be left to act?”

“At the time of the Revolution, dogs howled day and night all over Russia.”

“Does the world have nothing inside but sorrow?”

“My body gets weak without truth.”

“We can't feel anything - all that's left inside us is dust.”

“Happiness will come from materialism, not from meaning.”

“Then she would wander through fields, over simple, poor land, looking carefully and keenly all round her, still getting used to being alive in the world, and feeling glad that everything in it was right for her — for her body, her heart, and her freedom.”

“Without truth I feel ashamed to be alive.”

“I lived and languished.”