Sergei Lukyanenko Quotes

I believe it, she's a very good person, kind. There's weariness there, but no bitterness or spite. When you're with a girl like that you feel like a different person. You try to be better, and that's a strain. Men prefer to be friends with her kind, flirt a bit, share confidences. They don't often fall in love with girls like that, but everybody loves them.

When people love each other, when they find each other out of thousands and millions of people. It's always destiny.

Why was is that the Light acted through lies, and the Darkness acted though the truth? Why was is that our truth proved powerless, but lies were effective? And why was the Darkness able to manage perfectly well with truth in order to do Evil?

Would any grown girl in Russia be frightened by a "room of horror"? Westerner's lives are too calm and peaceful, is makes them afraid of all sorts of nonsense ...

When we acknowledge that human beings have the right to choose, we deprive ourselves of it,

You're a Dark One," said Anton. "All you see in everything is evil, treachery, trickery."

"All I do is not close my eyes to them," Edgar retorted. "And that's why I don't trust Zabulon. I distrust him almost as much as I do Gesar. I can even trust you more - you're just another unfortunate chess piece who happens by chance to be painted a different color from me. Does a white pawn hate a black one? No. Especially if the two pawns have their heads down together over a quiet beer or two."

"You know," Anton said in a slightly surprised voice, "I just don't understand how you can carry on living if you see the world like that. I'd just go and hang myself."

"So you don't have any counterarguments to offer?"

Anton took a gulp of beer too. The wonderful thing about this natural Czech beer was that even if you drank lots of it, it still didn't make your head or your body feel heavy... Or was that an illusion?

"Not a single one," Anton admitted. "Right now, this very moment, not a single one. But I'm sure you're wrong. It's just difficult to argue about the colors of the rainbow with a blind man. There's something missing in you... I don't know what exactly. But it's something very important, and without it you're more helpless than a blind man.

We are our own gods and our own demons

What did a young body mean, when you could see the dust of the centuries in the other person's eyes?

He enjoyed life for its own sake, not for material possessions. Life was the exact opposite of money, which in itself meant nothing.

Experience is primarily the ability to restrain our fleeting impulses.

Because love is also a power. A great power, and it should not be disdained.

Nobody can be forced to commit an act of villainy. You can't push anybody into the mud; people always step into it themselves.

[after guard dogs frozen mid-attack] 'How long are the dogs going to stay hanging there like that?' ask Yulia. 'I want to make friends with them. Otherwise, i'll be left with a latent psychological complex that's bound to affect my personality and sexual preferences.

Many years ago someone told me something that I flatly refused to accept. And I still don't accept it now, despite all the times I've seen it proved right.
"The common good and the individual good rarely coincide ... "
Sure, I know, it's true.
But some truths are probably worse than lies.

That's how myths are born. Out of our carelessness, out of our tattered nerves, out of jokes that go wrong and flashy gestures.

Drink your coffee, it clears out the brain in the morning

The whole problem is that the regime is a reflection of society. Crooked and grotesque, but still a reflection. And as long as most of the citizens of a country - if they happened to gain power - would steal and regard themselves as better than other people, no remoralization of the ruling circles will change anything. Those politicians who acquire a conscience will leave. And new ones without consciences will take their places. It's people who have to change, society -

I can't see the line between deliberate intention and coincidence.

The Crown of All Things is here concealed. Only one step is left. But this is a legacy for the strong or the wise - Foma

An assassin can be found for every president. And for every prophet there are a thousand interpreters to distort the essence of the religion, to replace the bright flame with the heat of the inquisitors' pyres. The time came when every book was cast into the fire, when every symphony was reduced to a popular tune and played in all the drinking dens. A sound philosophical basis could be set in place under any vile nonsense.

And the simple people are trash. A herd of sheep that are good for shearing, but sometimes it's more profitable to slaughter them.

This was how you wound up in the Inquisition. When you stopped being able to see any difference between Light Ones and Dark Ones. When for you, people weren't even a flock of sheep, but just a handful of spiders in a glass jar. When you stopped believing in the future, and all you wanted to do was preserve the status quo. For yourself. For those few individuals who were still dear to you.

The laws of nature are not intelligent,' I replied. 'The force of gravity is not intelligent. Electricity is not intelligent. A savage looking at a television might assume that it's a sapient being, but we - '
'A sapient being? Looking at a television these days, the only possible assumption is that it's a loud-mouthed, hysterical madman suffering from progressive mental debility,' Anna Tikhonovna said derisively.

What if every time you fought for love, you were fighting for the whole world? For the whole world - not against the whole world.

People don't usually think about the meaning of the words they say. It seems to them that words convey truth. That when someone hears the word "red" he will think of a ripe raspberry and not a pool of blood. That the word "love" will evoke Shakespeare's sonnets and not the erotic films of Playboy. And they find themselves baffled when the word they've spoken doesn't evoke the right response.

-"Do you know what it's like to be condemned to love?"
-"But isn't it always like that?" Svetlana asked, trembling with indignation. "When people love each other, when they find each other out of thousands and millions of people. It's always destiny!"
Once again I sensed that infinitely naive girl in her, the girl who couldn't hate anything except herself. The girl who was already beginning to disappear.
-"No, Sveta, haven't you ever heard love compared to a flower?"
-"Yes."
-"A flower can be grown, Sveta. But it can be bought too, or given as a gift."
-"Did Anton buy it?"
-"No," I said, a bit too sharply. "It was a gift. From destiny."
-"What difference does that make? If it is love?"
-"Sveta, cut flowers are beautiful, but they don't live for long. They're already dying, even the ones that are carefully placed in a crystal vase and given fresh water.

There is very much in the world that is bad. But usually the attempt to defeat evil engenders more evil. I advise you to do good; that is the only way to win the victory!

Loneliness, dejection, the contempt or pity of people around you
these are unpleasant feelings. But they are precisely the things that produce genuine Dark Ones.

Indeed, being a beginner is very difficult right now. Book publishers are in a crisis, sales are dwindling, and publishing houses are losing money, doing their best to survive. It's a sign of the times, the emergence of new kinds of entertainment
there's nothing we can do about it. I don't think books will perish for good. They could become less widespread, though, falling even further behind movies and computer games. But we shouldn't be afraid of this, because books will always remain the entertainment of choice for intelligent people, of whom there are still many in this world.

When leaders betray their people and the people don't overthrow them, it's not just the leaders who should be blamed.

A car's not the right place for showing off to a girl - the bed's the place for that. The consequences of a mistake there are more upsetting, but less tragic.

This is the inevitable consequence of a popular movie: you become the guy who wrote "the book that inspired the movie." Frankly speaking, I find it a bit insulting.

If age teaches you anything, then one of its lessons is certainly not to hurry if you're already late ...

There are far more reasons for death than there are for life.

For every prophet there are a thousand interpreters to distort the essence of the religion, to replace the bright flame with the heat of the inquisitors' pyres.

As she conceived it, tea had to be as black as tar and as strong as a sinner's conscience. Or the other way around. As black as that conscience and as strong as tar. And sweet.

Evil has no need to bother with eliminating Good. It's far simpler to let Good fight against itself.

In a war the most dangerous thing is to understand the enemy. To understand is to forgive. And we
have no right to do that - we never have had, not since the creation of the world.

The way people behave depends on the basic moral tests and norms in a society. Naturally, the Khmer Rouge, Al-Qaeda terrorists, respectable middle-class Europeans, and, say, members of the Komosol in the 1930's, would behave quite differently in identical situations. But that wouldn't change the essential point. The ration of altruists and egoists, even among Benedictine monks and members of the Gestapo, is the same. It's just that their altruism and egotism are expressed differently.

A writer who wants to be translated and published abroad faces a very difficult challenge: first of all, he must make sure that his book is cosmopolitan in the best sense of the word, that it is interesting to a global audience. Nobody is going to read about problems that they don't care about.

I suppose that literature as it is won't die, science fiction included. But games are becoming an extremely important part of the science fiction world, including games that are adapted from books (or vice versa: books that are adapted from games). It's wonderful to have the opportunity to play and see your favorite characters on the screen, but the opportunity to read a book does not become less attractive.

Life consists of nothing but exceptions.

The hardest thing of all is when pain is hidden behind a mask of calm.

Love is happiness, but only when you believe it will last forever. Even though every time it turns out to be a lie, it's only faith that gives love its strength and its joy.

If you have love in you, it's a strength. But if you are in love, it's a weakness.

How wonderful it would be if everything could always be as clear and simple as it used to be when you were twelve years old, or twenty years old. If there really were only two colors in the world: black and white. But even the most honest and ingenuous cop, raised on the resounding ideal of the stars and stripes, has to understand sooner or later that there's more than just Darkness and Light out on the streets. There are understandings, concessions, agreements. Informers, traps, provocations. Sooner or later the time comes when you have to betray your own side, plant bags of heroin in pockets, and beat people on the kidneys - carefully, so there are no marks.

How easily the truth is lost, and how persistent lies are.

Life in death and death in life. Could

If there's no ethically correct solution, act irrationally.

If we do any deed that is unconditionally good, it gives the Dark Magicians the right to do an evil deed.

If they do anything to me, just skin them alive, sweetheart," I said.
"I'll do more than that
I'll make them eat their own skins.

That's the hardest thing of all
never to become cynical, never to lose faith, never to become indifferent.

Above all, translators must be native speakers. It's not because they speak the language better
I understand that sometimes a foreigner can learn a language better than native speakers. It has more to do with having an intimate knowledge of the society for which the book is being translated.

Ill-considered but well-intentioned actions do more good that actions that are well-considered but cruel.

But I'm quite sure of one thing: If it's possible to do something, sooner or later someone's going to do it.

Because love stands above Darkness and Light.
Because love is not sex or a shared faith, or "the joint maintenance of a household and the upbringing of children."
Because love is also Power.
And Light and Darkness, people and Others, morality and law, the Ten Commandments and the Great Treaty have damn all to do with it.

Every city has streets that were built under an unlucky star. And they don't have to be located in the outskirts, either. Sometimes they run along beside gloomy factory buildings, sometimes along the railway lines or main highways, sometimes even beside a park or ravine that has survived through some oversight by the municipal authorities.

When there are strange things going on all around, every coincidence should be considered very carefully.

In Russia a café like this would have been closed down in a moment. In Europe they would have put the owner in prison. In the USA the proprietor would have been hit with an absolutely massive fine. And in Japan the boss of an establishment like this would have committed seppuku out of a sense of shame.

Maybe it was cold and miserable in the forest, but man can bring his own warmth and comfort anywhere he goes.

What has to happen to us before we understand that we have to take good care of everything we have, of every tree in our boundless forests, every little stream that isn't even marked on the maps, every village with only five households, every soldier drafted into the army, every man in the street toiling under his dreary daily burden? What will it take to change us?

He looked just perfect to play Dorian Gray in a film version of Oscar Wilde's novel. Young, graceful, and indecently fresh and handsome, he could easily have worn a badge that said READY FOR DEBAUCHERY!

We'll get into the plane and you'll have a cup of coffee, even a sip of brandy is permissible. And you'll think. Think hard. So hard I can hear your brains creaking. And it will be very good if by the time we reach Edinburgh you already know how to get the Crown of All Things. Because we don't have any time to spare. Only twelve hours until the bomb goes off."
"You bastard," I said.
"No, I'm a highly effective personnel manager," Edgar said, with a smile.

I'm sorry," I said. I felt unbearably ashamed. "I'm sorry." "What for?" "For being a blind, self-satisfied ass. For not seeing . . .

All we can do is try not to fall.

Until you become wiser, you won't become more powerful. Until you become more powerful you won't master higher magic. Until you master higher magic, you won't go into places that are dangerous. Your situation is unique. You were affected by" - he frowned - "the

Fuck your fucking mother!' Gesar howled, twisting the wheel round. In a moment of genuine terror only the Russian language could convey the true depths of his feelings. It made me feel proud of our great Russian culture!

I get the same buzz cleaning up the yard as Leo Tolstoy did from scything hay.

What was my truth worth, if I was prepared to defend the entire world, but not those who were close to me? If I subdued hate, but wouldn't give love a chance?

What an unfortunate instrument the guitar is! An instrument of such great nobility, a genuine monarch of music
reduced to a pitiful lump of wood with six strings, constantly abused by people with no ear and no voice.

Where there's black, even grey looks white,