Author of quotes: Varlam Shalamov

Mozart became Mozart because he worked much more than Salieri. This work gave Mozart pleasure.

I saw what a weighty argument for an intellectual is an ordinary splash.

Engineers, geologists, doctors who came to Kolyma on contracts with Dal, corrupted quickly: long the ruble, the law - the taiga, slave labor, which is so easy and profitable to use, a narrowing of the cultural interests - all of that corrupts, corrupts, man, long time worked in the camp, not going to the mainland - where it is worthless, and he is accustomed to rich, prosperous life. This depravity called in the literature the "call of the North".

Rough and cruel chief, the false teacher, unscrupulous doctor, but all this is nothing compared to the corrupting power of the criminal world. Those are all the same people, and there, he will see in them human. Thieves - not the people.

Power is corruption. Unchained beast hidden in the human soul, seeking the satisfaction of his greedy eternal human essence in the beatings, the murders. I don't know if it is possible to obtain satisfaction from the signature on death sentences. Perhaps, there are also a grim pleasure in the imagination, not looking for excuses.

- So I can not live. "Better to die standing than live on my knees", - said solemnly Shestakov. - Who said that?
In fact. A familiar phrase. But couldn't remember who and when said these words. All the book was forgotten. The book did not believe.

In the hall, and now stood, one after another, and, though he had not recorded and could not write his poems, all words easily used to get up at some predetermined and each time an extraordinary pace. Rhyme was a seeker tool magnetic search words and concepts. Every word was a part of the world, it has responded to rhyme, and the whole world is swept with the speed of any electronic machines. Everyone was shouting: take me. No, me. To look for anything not necessary. Only had to discard. Here were two people - one who composes, who started his chopper in full, and another that selects from time to time stops a running machine. And, seeing that he is two people, the poet realized that now writes real poems. And that is that they are not recorded? To write, print, all is vanity. Everything that is born not disinterested, is not the best. The best part is that it's not recorded that was written and disappeared, vanished without a trace, and only the creative joy he feels and that with nothing to confuse, proves that the poem was created that beautiful was created. Not wrong is he? Unmistakable if his creative joy?
He remembered how bad as poetically helpless was the last verses of the Block and as the Block don't seem to understand...

Our knowledge of people does not give us anything useful in life. What's the point in what I see, feel, figure, foresee the actions of another person? After all, his behavior towards him, I can't change, I won't bring the same prisoner, like myself, whatever he was doing. I will not seek the post of foreman, giving the opportunity to stay alive, for the worst in the camp is the imposition of your (or someone else's) will, to another person, the prisoner, like me. I will not look for useful contacts, bribes. And what good is that I know that Ivanov is a scoundrel, but Petrov is a spy, and Zaslavsky a false witness?

The main sin is to meddle in the Affairs of others, and writers should never meddle in other people's souls, no, in any case. The writer popped in my own soul. And that's all.

The camp experience is entirely negative, one minute. Man it only gets worse.

- I, Galina Pavlovna, since, as I became an adult, I live on a very important commandment: "do Not teach his neighbor." In the manner of the gospel. Every destiny is unique. Just prescription fake.
- I thought the writers...
The misfortune of Russian literature, Galina Pavlovna, that she climbs into other people's Affairs, directs the destinies of others, speaks on issues in which she understands nothing, having no right to meddle in a moral issue to condemn, not knowing and not wanting to know anything.

All human feelings - love, friendship, jealousy, kindness, compassion, thirst for fame, honesty - had left us with the meat that we lost during his prolonged starvation. In minor muscular layer that remained on our bones, which still gave us the opportunity to eat, move, and breathe, and even cut logs, and pour a shovel of stone and sand in cars and even driving cars on the endless wooden ladder to the gold mine, along the narrow wooden road on rinsing device, this muscular layer is only anger - the most enduring human emotion.

Obviously, the orderly seemed shameful to wash the floors yourself at least five minutes in the day when he can hire a laborer. This property, inherent to the Russian people, Andreev observed at the mine. Will give head for the cleaning of the barrack orderly a handful of tobacco: half of tobacco orderly put in your pouch, and half will hire the orderly from the barracks of the fifty-eighth article. That, in turn, perepolovinit shag and hire the workers from their barracks for two cigarettes cigarette. And that's a hard worker, having worked twelve to fourteen hours per shift, washing floors on the night for these two cigarettes. And thinks for the happiness - after all, the tobacco it'll change the bread.

With the first illusion was over quickly. This is real work, the work, which at the gates of all camp departments is prescribed by the Charter of the camp inscription: "Labor is a matter of honor, matter of fame, matter of valor and heroism." The camp could instill instilled only hatred and aversion to work.