Lachezar Ivanov Quotes

When it comes to culture, religion and mentality, most Russians identify with Europe. ~ Sergei Ivanov

Ivanov: No, my clever young thing, it's not a question of romance. I say as before God that I will endure everything - depression and mental illness and ruin and the loss of my wife and premature old age and loneliness - but I cannot tolerate, cannot endure being ridiculous in my own eyes. I'm dying of shame at the thought that I, a healthy, strong man, have turned into some sort of Hamlet or Manfred, some sort of 'superfluous man' ... devil knows precisely what!
There are pitiful people who are flattered by being called Hamlet or superfluous men, but for me it's a disgrace! It stirs up my pride, I'm overcome by shame and I suffer ... ~ Anton Chekhov

Moscow has been helping the Northern Alliance because the Taliban was openly supported by Pakistan, .. until last week, Pakistani servicemen had taken part in war operations on the Taliban side. ~ Sergei Ivanov

My double drags his coffin, humble slave,
I, at least, am real, though changed to flesh.
Far-off, I build me a church no hand can shape

("Winter Sonnets: III") ~ Vyacheslav Ivanov

I don't approve of mixing ideologies," Ivanov continued. "There are only two conceptions of human ethics, and they are at opposite poles. One of them is Christian and humane, declares the individual to be sacrosanct, and asserts that the rules of arithmetic are not to be applied to human units. The other starts from the basic principle that a collective aim justifies all means, and not only allows, but demands, that the individual should in every way be subordinated and sacrificed to the community
which may dispose of it as an experimentation rabbit or a sacrificial lamb. The first conception could be called anti-vivisection morality, the second, vivisection morality. Humbugs and dilettantes have always tried to mix the two conceptions; in practice, it is impossible. ~ Arthur Koestler

Going back to the 1920s, when Stalin ordered the most famous animal breeder in Russia to do it, to make a new race of soldiers for him. His name was Ivanov, ~ Michael Crichton

Russia sees itself as a country that is self-sufficient. ~ Sergei Ivanov

God-fucking-damn but he was seriously good-looking. "Have you ever had the stuffed pancakes here? They're evil. I highly recommend them."
"Heh. The cop is recommending evil," I said. "Too funny."
To my surprise, Ivanov chuckled. "You've discovered my dark side. ~ Diana Rowland

Ivanov had been a party member since 1902. Back then he had tried to write stories in the manner of Tolstoy, Chekhov, Gorky, or rather he had tried to plagiarize them without much success, which led him, after long reflection (a whole summer night), to the astute decision that he should write in the manner of Odoevsky and Lazhechnikov. Fifty percent Odoevsky and fifty percent Lazhecknikov. This went over well, in part because readers, their memories mostly faulty, had forgotten poor Odoevsky (1803-1869) and poor Lazhechnikov (1792-1869), who died the same year, and in part because literary criticism, as keen as ever, neither extrapolated nor made the connection nor noticed a thing. ~ Roberto Bolano

You say asshole; I say hole of the ass, but we say same thing, yes?" - Babushka Ivanov ~ Jessie Lane

Ivanov: With a heavy head, with a slothful spirit, exhausted, overstretched, broken, without faith, without love, without a goal, I roam like a shadow among men and I don't know who I am, why I'm alive, what I want. And I now think that love is nonsense, that embraces are cloying, that there's no sense in work, that song and passionate speeches are vulgar and outmoded. And everywhere I take with me depression, chill boredom, dissatisfaction, revulsion from life ... I am destroyed, irretrievably! ~ Anton Chekhov

Entirely my own opinion," said Ivanov. "I am glad that we have reached the heart of the matter soon. In other words: you are convinced that "we" – that is to say, the Party, the State and the masses behind it – no longer represent the interests of the Revolution."
"I should leave the masses out of it," said Rubashov. […] "Leave the masses out of it, " he repeated. "You understand nothing about them. Nor, probably, do I any more. Once, when the great "we" still existed, we understood them as no one had ever understood them before. We had penetrated into their depths, we worked in the amorphous raw material of history itself…" […] "At that time," Rubashov went on, "we were called the Party of the Plebs. What did the others know of history? Passing ripples, little eddies and breaking waves. They wondered at the changing forms of the surface and could not explain them. But we had descended into the depths, into the formless, anonymous masses, which at all times constituted the substance of history; and we were the first to discover her laws of motion. We had discovered the laws of her inertia, of the slow changing of her molecular structure, and of her sudden eruptions. That was the greatness of our doctrine. The Jacobins were moralists; we were empirics. We dug in the primeval mud of history and there we found her laws. We knew more than ever men have known about mankind; that is why our revolution succeeded. And now you have buried it all again…." […] "Well," said Rubashov ~ Arthur Koestler

Ivanov: I am a bad, pathetic and worthless individual. One needs to be pathetic, too, worn out and drained by drink, like Pasha, to be still fond of me and to respect me. My God, how I despise myself! I so deeply loathe my voice, my walk, my hands, these clothes, my thoughts. Well, isn't that funny, isn't that shocking? Less than a year ago I was healthy and strong, I was cheerful, tireless, passionate, I worked with these very hands, I could speak to move even Philistines to tears, I could cry when I saw grief, I became indignant when I encountered evil. I knew inspiration, I knew the charm and poetry of quiet nights when from dusk to dawn you sit at your desk or indulge you mind with dreams. I believed, I looked into the future as into the eyes of my own mother ... And now, my God, I am exhausted, I do not believe, I spend my days and nights in idleness. ~ Anton Chekhov

We have put the Cold War behind us. We no longer count our divisions and our warheads. And I am Russia's first civilian defense minister in many centuries. We have become more pragmatic. ~ Sergei Ivanov

Ivanov: A naive man is a fool. But you women are clever enough to be naive so that it comes out in you as engaging and healthy and warm, and not so silly as it might seem. Only why do you all behave like this? While a man is healthy and strong and in good spirits, you pay him no attention, but as soon as he rolls down the slippery slope and starts complaining about his woes, you hang on his neck. ~ Anton Chekhov

When I'm given a role, the first thing I do is read the play over and over again. I scour the script and write down everything the character says about himself and everything that everyone else says about him. I immerse myself in my character and imagine what it might be like to be that person.
When I played Cassio in Othello I imagined what it would be like to be a lieutenant in the Venetian navy in 1604. I sat down with Ewan McGregor and Chiwetel Ejiofor and together we decided that Othello, Iago and Cassio had soldiery in their bones.
I took from the script that Cassio was talented and ambitious, with no emotional or physical guard - and that's how I played the part.
For me, acting is about recreating the circumstances that would make me feel how my character is feeling. In the dressing room, I practise recreating those circumstances in my head and I try to not get in the way of myself. For example, in act two of Othello, when Cassio is manipulated to fight Roderigo and loses his rank, some nights I would burst into tears; other nights I wouldn't but I would still feel the same emotion, night after night. Just as in life, the way we respond to catastrophe or death will be different every time because the process is unconscious.
By comparison, in Chekhov's Ivanov I played the young doctor, Lvov. Lvov was described as "a prig and a bigot … uprightness in boots … tiresome … completely sincere". His emotions were locked away. I worked around the key phrase: ~ Tom Hiddleston

If you want women to love you, then don't be cross in front of them and don't go all pompous ... -Anna Petrovna in Ivanov ~ Anton Chekhov

Sympathy, conscience, disgust, despair, repentance, and atonement are for us repellent debauchery. To sit down and let oneself be hypnotized by one's own navel, to turn up one's eyes and humbly offer the back of one's neck to Gletkin's revolver - that is an easy solution. The greatest temptation for the like of us is: to renounce violence, to repent, to make peace with oneself. Most great revolutionaries fell before this temptation, from Spartacus to Danton and Dostoevsky; they are the classical form of betrayal of the cause. The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan. As long as chaos dominates the world, God is ananachronism; and every compromise with one's own conscience is perfidy. When the accursed inner voice speaks to you, hold your hands over your ears. ..." He felt for the bottle behind him and poured out an other glass. Rubashov noticed that the bottle was already half empty. You also could do with a little solace, he thought.

"The greatest criminals in history," Ivanov went on, "are not of the type Nero and Fouché, but of the type Gandhi and Tolstoy. Gandhi's inner voice has done more to prevent the liberation of India than the British guns. To sell oneself for thirty pieces of silver is an honest transaction; but to sell oneself to one's own conscience is to abandon mankind. History is a priori amoral; it has no conscience. To want to conduct history according to the maxims of the Sunday school means to leave every ~ Arthur Koestler

Lvov: I need to have a candid talk with you, Nikolay Alekseyevich.
Ivanov: Doctor, if we're going to have a candid talk every day, I haven't the strength for it. ~ Anton Chekhov

A human being," Kondrasev continued, "possesses from his birth a certain essence, the nucleus, as it were, of the human being. His 'I'. And it's still uncertain which forms which: whether life forms the man or man, with his strong spirit, forms his life! Because" - Kondrashev-Ivanov suddenly lowered his voice and leaned toward Nerzhin, who was again sitting on the block - "because he has something to measure himself against, something he can look to. Because he has in him an image of perfection which in rare moments suddenly emerges before his spiritual gaze. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

On a winter night I hear the Easter bell:
I knock on graves and quicken the dead,
Until at last in a grave I see - myself.

(Winter Sonnets: XI) ~ Vyacheslav Ivanov

Financial markets strive to be forward-looking, but not when it comes to underfollowed small cap stocks in obscure industries. Such stocks remain under the radar of most investors until they report huge acceleration in earnings growth. When a company that used to grow at 5 to 10% suddenly reports a 300% increase in earnings and a 100% increase in sales, it will grab the attention of many investors. ~ Ivaylo Ivanov