The Eighth Life

And if you don’t know who you are, then look at all the possible versions of you, find the most impossible one, and become that.

She had learned that words are not always promises, that music cannot save you, that your own abilities do not always lead to their predestined objective, that love is sometimes just camouflage for something much worse; she had learned to tame her dreams, had learned to paint over her disappointments with a dash of lipstick;

En ik vind het leven veel te kort en veel te mooi om het niet echt in de ogen te zien, het niet echt aan te gaan, het niet echt te leven.

We decide what we want to remember and what we don’t. Time has nothing to do with it. Time doesn’t care.

Love was slow, creeping poison, loge was treacherous and insincere, love was a veil thrown over the misery of the world, love was sticky and indigestible, it was a mirror in which one could be what one was not, it was a spectre that spread hope where hope had long since dies, it was a hiding place where people thought they found refuge and ultimately found only themselves, it was a vague memory of another love, it was the possibility of a salvation that was ultimately equivalent to a coup de grace, it was a war without victors, it was a precious jewel amid broken fragments you cut yourself on: yes, Brilka, in those days that was love.

People were afraid of memories, of insights, knowing these might drag them into a bottomless pit, twist their own lives out of all recognition, and all of this could cause self-loathing to swell to immeasurable proportions. Besides, where was all this wretched truth-telling heading?

Of course, we were too young for reality that night. Of course, dreams tasted better than the past and the future. Of course, hope was more attractive than the present. Of course, we were infatuated with each other and with revelling in our idea of love. Of course, we were the first and last lovers on the planet. Of course, the threat that hung in the air was a mere trifle compared to the turmoil we felt inside. Of course, that night we were wiser and more cunning than life itself.

But you can’t do everything at once. Having everything is like having nothing,

Zou je niet twee, drie, vier, zelfs talloze malen op de wereld moeten komen om aan je wensen te kunnen voldoen? Aan de mogelijkheden van deze wereld?

Ze dacht aan Peter Vasiljev en aan de geesten van niet-geleefde dromen, die gedoemd zijn een mens te blijven achtervolgen. Ze zag zichzelf nog een laatste keer in het Théâtre du Châtelet over het toneel zwieren, gewild, geliefd, bejubeld, en sloot het glimlachend in haar hart, dat verloren andere leven, vol vrijheid, ongebreidelde hartstochten en provocaties, in de kring van uitverkorenen en voortreffelijken - ten slotte dwong ze zichzelf toch op te staan, omdat Kitty en Kostja alweer ruziemaakten en Christine hen niet tot de rede wist te brengen.

In Germany you cannot have a revolution because you would have to step on the lawns. VLADIMIR LENIN

and you asked me where people keep their childhood, and I remember telling you that we keep it hidden, between our ribs, in little liver spots and moles, in the roots of our hair, above our heart, in our ears or our laugh.

What an effort it cost to absent yourself from the world.

Perhaps his discipline, his longing for power, was nothing more than a constant effort to annihilate this fear. The fear of mistakes, the fear that everything around him might one day turn out to be meaningless.

Didn't one have to be born twice - three, four, countless times, even - in order to do justice to one's desires?

Searching for yourself and at the same time refusing to become yourself, for fear that you wouldn't be able to shake off all the ghosts that pursue us.

Someone who needs a veil, an object, even one made of silk, between themselves and the world is afraid of life. They’re afraid to experience things, to really feel them. And I think life is far too short and far too wonderful not to really look at it, not to really grab it, not to really live it.

I am duty bound to her. I am duty bound to her chaos. I have always been duty bound to seek my heaven in her chaos.

It was too long since each had discarded his own will, his own opinion, even his own feelings; now they sat like marionettes abandoned by their puppeteer.

Creating the idea of an enemy for oneself releases a destructive power. Because it is not the enemy who creates mistrust, but mistrust that creates the enemy. MERAB MAMARDASHVILI

What Hitler didn’t know was that the terror and misery the Wehrmacht planned to bring with its invasion were already part of everyday life in the USSR. That the Soviet horror of recent years had prepared the people all too well for the horror Hitler planned to inflict on their country.

any action intended to weaken the leadership was punishable as counter-revolutionary. The exact meaning of ‘weaken’ remained vague, nebulous, and therefore applicable to any action that displeased the Party.

Civil war has its laws, as is well known, and they have never been the laws of humanity. LEON TROTSKY

Patriotism is slavery. TOLSTOY

They lent each other happiness. They lent each other the present, and gave each other memories for the future.

The law meant that anyone who had ever laughed at an anti-socialist joke or read an anti-socialist book, visited Europe or given his wife a western perfume could be picked up by NKVD officers without any warning or explanation — preferably at dawn. Of the twenty-one men on the Central Committee in 1917, only one was left alive by 1938: the man of steel himself.

Ik vroeg me af of we alles wat er intussen was gebeurd, of we al die andere mensen van de afgelopen jaren aan elkaar zouden kunnen ruiken, proeven, voelen. En of dat ertoe deed.

Two madmen are never going to allow one to become greater than the other.

That autumn, people started to clean up the mess in the world and enlarge the cemeteries in the cities.

Sie liehen sich gegenseitig das Glück. Sie liehen sich gegenseitig die Gegenwart und schenkten sich zukünftige Erinnerungen.