The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything....The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world built on sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. The totalitarian world, whether founded on Marx, Islam, or anything else, is a world of answers rather than questions. There, the novel has no place.

~ Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera Books Gulag Novels Utopia

Where an open war is impossible, oppression can continue quietly behind the scenes. Terrorism. Guerrilla warfare, violence, prisons, concentration camps. I ask you: Is this peace?The true antipode of peace is violence. And those who want peace in the world should remove not only war from the world but also violence. If there is no open war but there is still violence, that is not peace.

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Communism Concentration Camps Guerrilla Warfare Gulag Peace Prisons Terrorism Violence War

If it were possible for any nation to fathom another people's bitter experience through a book, how much easier its future fate would become and how many calamities and mistakes it could avoid. But it is very difficult. There always is this fallacious belief: 'It would not be the same here; here such things are impossible.'Alas, all the evil of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth.

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Facism Gulag Politics Stalin Stalinism

All history is one continuous pestilence. There is no truth and there is no illusion. There is nowhere to appeal and nowhere to go.

~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1968 Gulag History Pessimism Post Truth Prison Resignation Ruska Doronin

You know I won’t take a chance with your lives…” Ethan replied. “You’re the future of the Fortner family.” He smiled and took her hand in his. “Like I said, don’t worry…before you know it you’ll have Jeff back and you can tell him he’s going to be a father!

~ C.g. Faulkner

C.g. Faulkner Cia Family Grandfather Gulag Kgb Spy Thriller Terrorism

To combat death you don't need much of a life, just one that isn't yet finished.

~ Herta Müller

Herta Müller Death Death And Dying Gulag Hunger Starvation Will To Live

Sveta had much less to say, but she sat with Lev and held his hand, and when I asked her what had made her fall in love with him, she replied, ‘I knew he was my future. When he was not there, I would look for him, and he would always appear by my side. That is love.’ Sveta

~ Orlando Figes

Orlando Figes Gulag Love Russia Soulmates