Live and Remember Quotes

“Believe them and they'll tell you all sorts of things.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“You're afraid of people's judgment…What do you care! People are like dogs; whenever anyone makes a wrong move they set up a holler. They bark and then they stop--and wait for someone else to go wrong.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“Let them, let them scratch where it itches, it's a real human itch to gossip, to go over someone's bones until they're picked clean. They can't live without it. And you just keep quiet, do your work, and don't taunt them--they'll stop sooner. And then it'll be someone else's turn, and you'll be with the others again. Is this the first time? The very thing they blame you for, they'll praise you for later. People…”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“...sometime when your life is so good, you'll want to make your happiness as simple as possible.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“What was so wrong with us? We were young, healthy, matched in every way. Live and be happy. No, I had to show my strength, be moody. What a fool. And I didn't understand that I was a fool; after all, I do have some brains, but I couldn't stop myself.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“Everything, that she was saying, now, everything that she saw and heard, took place in a deep numbness, in which all the senses are stilled and a person exists not in one's own life but with some emergency life that is stuck onto one. In such situations fear, pain, surprise and enlightenment come later, and until such time as one comes to one's senses, this sober, sturdy, and almost unfeeling mechanism takes over.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“Believe them and they'll you all sorts of things.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“Lately, Nastoyna felt that she had no right to criticize anyone at all -- no man, no animal, no bird, because each lived his own life, which was not in his control and which he could not change.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“Let others do as they wished, but she would live the life she began and would not run from corner to corner in a frenzy. She would wait for her own happiness, not someone else's.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“How many people, healthy and strong do not distinguish their own, personal, God-given feelings from the common, dime-a-dozen feelings. Those people get into bed with the same unbridled pleasure, ready for anything, that they sit at a table with: just to be satisfied. And they cry and laugh looking around--to make sure that they are seen laughing and crying so that their tears do not go to waste. They were played out: touch them a special way--and they won't understand, they won't respond, not a single string will vibrate with a sensitive quiver. It's too late for them--they are deaf and dumb, and they will never touch anyone that way either. And all because they did not want or did not know how to be alone with themselves, they had forgotten and lost themselves, and now they couldn't remember or find themselves.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“How easy and wonderful it is to live in happy days and how bitter and accursed it is in miserable days! Why can't people save up the one to soften the pain of the other? Why is there always a chasm between the two? Where were you, what games were you playing when your fate was being decided? Why did you let them chop off your wings, without thinking, just when you needed them most, when you need to fly and not crawl from disaster?”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“When you tell the truth, they don't believe you. And it was easier to tell the truth.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“That's why they say: work puts man in his grave but it's work that feeds and protects him until the grave. The important thing is that it protects him.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“But how can you keep watch on a woman? A woman can fool herself, not to mention others.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“You must remember everything. Everything must be remembered, but the bad, like private parts, shouldn't be shown without a good reason.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“No, even though everyone had one set of hands and feet, there was more than one person inside--there were several, each pulling a different way, tearing you apart until they led you to your grave And yet we think that another's soul is impenetrable--as though we know our own at least a little.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“Whether a person is in bed or walking along and is struck by sudden death, it's right for humans to die on solid ground, with the earth beneath their feet and air trying to get into the lungs.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“There was truth in the saying: the one you marry is the one you become.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“Those of us who where there would not have survived without those of you who remained here. Because the man fights and the woman feeds, the man hates the enemy and the woman a thousand miles away softens his heart with herself and the children so that his heart won't turn to stone.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“I am, whatever may come tomorrow, today I am.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“Andrei walked a lot: this was the best and most pleasant state for him--to be walking, to move no matter where. Thoughts are simpler when you walk, and you can amuse them with what you see along the way”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“You can't rid of yourself suspicion that easily; once it appears it exists independently; and then it takes over, and the person has no control over it.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“When everything is fine, it's easy to be together: it's like a dream, all you have to worry about is breathing and the rest takes care of itself. You have to be together when things are bad -- that's why people get married.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“Take everything that's yours with you, don't save any -- it won't be needed later.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“Life was not a piece of clothing that could be changed ten times. What there is, is all yours, and it's wrong to refuse any of it, even the very worst.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“Don't listen to people--listen to yourself.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“This is everything for me, my only service in life. And let people not know, but my blood will know that he's mine. Only our blood remembers us anyway.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“Why are you taking away my last hope that I had lived to some purpose?”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“Lots of things happen in a woman's body, and nothing works exactly on schedule.”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember

“A man must live with sin, or he is no man”
― Valentin Rasputin, Live and Remember