There 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 GrossmanHuman history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness.
Vasily GrossmanAt war a Russian man puts on a white shirt. He may live in sin, but he dies like a saint.
Vasily GrossmanThe 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 Grossman