The divine impeccability of the immortal [Soviet] State turned out not only to have suppressed individual human beings but also to have defended them, to have comforted them in their weakness, to have justified their insignificance. The State had taken on its own shoulders the entire weight of responsibility; it had liberated people from the chimera of conscience.
Vasily GrossmanThe longer a nation's history, the more wars, invasions, wanderings, and periods of captivity it has seen-the greater the diversity of its faces.
Vasily GrossmanAt war a Russian man puts on a white shirt. He may live in sin, but he dies like a saint.
Vasily GrossmanIvan tells Anna: "I used to imagine that being embraced by a woman . . . as something so wonderful that it would make me forget everthing . . . [But] happiness, it turns out, will be to share with you the burden I can't share with anyone else.
Vasily GrossmanGood men and bad men alike are capable of weakness. The difference is simply that a bad man will be proud all his life of one good deed - while an honest man is hardly aware of his good acts, but remembers a single sin for years on end.
Vasily GrossmanThere are people whose souls have just withered, people who are willing to go along with anything evil - anything so as not to be suspected of disagreeing with whoever is in power.
Vasily GrossmanThere is a deep and undeniable sadness in all this: whenever we see the dawn of an eternal good that will never be overcome by evil โ an evil that is itself eternal but will never succeed in overcoming good โ whenever we see this dawn, the blood of old people and children is always shed.
Vasily Grossman