Siberia Quotes

Many years ago, when I lived in the mini-Siberia they call East Anglia, I was awakened in the early hours by the sound of a pantechnicon being loaded. Peeping through the curtains, I observed the grocer doing a runner with all his chattels and his family. ~ Clive Sinclair

This rise of the new global mega-rich is happening as established institutions are falling. The fall runs the gamut from the music business and traditional media to the Detroit automakers who find themselves obsolete, outmaneuvered, and out-priced by entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, Mumbai, Shanghai, and even Siberia. ~ Robert Kiyosaki

Unfortunately," she admitted. "MacKilligans aren't allowed in Siberia. There was an incident." "With the bears?" "Oh, no." She placed her head on his shoulder, snuggling close, before admitting, "Not with the bears. With everybody. ~ Shelly Laurenston

The neighborhood I grew up in had this fence that surrounds the watershed. And if you go on the other side of that fence, there's nothing until the North Pole and down to Siberia. It's the absolute cutoff point between man and nature. ~ Douglas Coupland

My best friend. I had my best friend back. If I had her, I could recover from what had happened in Siberia. I could go on with my life. ~ Richelle Mead

Her name ... was Mrs. marina Orlova, and she had grown up in Siberia. Later, she would tell him that she loathed the American custom of constantly smiling: "They are like chimpanzees," she said, in her bitter exclamatory voice. She grimaced, baring her teeth grotesquely. "Eee!" she said. "I smile at you! Eee! It is repulsive. ~ Dan Chaon

At his words, the good butterflies trounced the bad butterflies and the bad ones retreated to Siberia. ~ Kristen Ashley

Outside the window, there slides past that unimaginable and deserted vastness where night is coming on, the sun declining in ghastly blood-streaked splendour like a public execution across, it would seem, half a continent, where live only bears and shooting stars and the wolves who lap congealing ice from water that holds within it the entire sky. All white with snow as if under dustsheets, as if laid away eternally as soon as brought back from the shop, never to be used or touched. Horrors! And, as on a cyclorama, this unnatural spectacle rolls past at twenty-odd miles an hour in a tidy frame of lace curtains only a little the worse for soot and drapes of a heavy velvet of dark, dusty blue. ~ Angela Carter

If bones could freeze, then the brain could also be dulled and the soul could freeze over. And the soul shuddered and froze- perhaps to remain frozen forever. ~ Varlam Shalamov

I have always been more comfortable with daredevil acts than with the everyday nuances of life. Let me jump out of a plane, speak in front of a roomful of strangers, even trek across Siberia. ~ Sarah Kay

And if there is water there let it be from a river. And if there is peace let it be from silence and forgetting. From the slow settle of dust on a house worn down, on a history lost, on a woman buried quietly into geography. And if there is memory let it be disjointed and nonsensical, let it disturb understanding and logic, let it rise like birds or hands into the blood blue bone of the sky, whispering its nothing beyond telling. ( ... ) Let someone lose the captions to all of the photographs; let them pile into new logics and forms that outlive us.
- "Siberia: Still Life of a Moving Image" (6. Representation) ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

You can hit my father over the head with a chair and he won't wake up, but my mother, all you have to do to my mother is cough somewhere in Siberia and she'll hear you. ~ J.D. Salinger

I have a number of places on my wish list, including Antarctica, the Norwegian fjords, and the Amazon. I have a passion for wilderness, and Siberia is on my list - however, that may be a bridge too far. ~ Robert Powell

Siberia is so big, it's almost more an idea than a place ~ Ian Frazier

This is because Marxism looks at things as a whole and in relation to each other - or tries to, but its limitations are not the point for the moment. A person who has been influenced by Marxism takes it for granted that an event in Siberia will affect one in Botswana. I think it is possible that Marxism was the first attempt, for our time [written in 1971], outside the formal religions, at a world-mind, a world ethic. It went wrong, could not prevent itself from dividing and subdividing, like all the other religions, into smaller and smaller chapels, sects and creeds. But it was an attempt. ~ Doris Lessing

Then a beat-up car lurched into sight towing an even more beat-up car. As the cars came near, I saw that they were connected back to front by a loop made of two seat belts buckled to each other. That was the only time I ever saw a Russian use a seat belt for any purpose at all. ~ Ian Frazier

This saintly anarchist, who aroused the people of the abyss, the outcasts and "sinners," the Chandala of Judaism, to rise in revolt against the established order of things - and in language which, if the Gospels are to be credited, would get him sent to Siberia today - this man was certainly a political criminal, at least in so far as it was possible to be one in so absurdly unpolitical a community. This is what brought him to the cross: the proof thereof is to be found in the inscription that was put upon the cross. He died for his own sins - there is not the slightest ground for believing, no matter how often it is asserted, that he died for the sins of others. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Go play your favorite game."
Feeling the hum of anticipation in his belly, Andrew gave his alpha an innocent smile. "I have no idea what you mean."
Hawke pointed a finger at him. "I want my calm, collected lieutenant back by the end of the week, or I'm packing you in a box and shipping you to fucking Siberia."
Andrew grinned. "I hear it's nice there this time of year. ~ Nalini Singh

Russia is usually readier to ascribe misfortune to conspiracies rather than to the more probable screwup. ~ Dominic Ziegler

The Russian system of justice and police is so haphazard, so inhuman, so arbitrary and corrupt, that a poor malefactor has more reason to fear his trial than his sentence. He is impatient for the time when he will be sent to Siberia; for his martyrdom comes to an end when his punishment begins. ~ Alexander Herzen

Return America to the Native Americans!
I'm all for returnin' America to the Native Americans.
No siree bub, I'm not talking about them
featherhead Indians with the casinos.
Fuck them greedy mixed breed tomahawk chuckers.
I'm talking about the real Native Americans ~
a proud people who came from a tiny mountainous region in Siberia
that walked across the ice 13,000 years ago to get here
and probably froze their balls off.

Native Americans,
whatever's left of y'allz,
take my country...please.
You deserve it ~
but on one condition:

You name the country Texas
and all the Christian white folk here get to have
our own friggin' casinos. ~ Beryl Dov

You and Raquel should lead the attack against the IPCA facility. Where is it? Iceland? Siberia?"
"Illinoise," Raquel answered. "Normal, Illinoise, a couple of hours outside Chicago."
I snorted. "Finally, IPCA gets a sense of humor. ~ Kiersten White

My heart leaves, hitchhikes right out of my body, heads north, catches a ferry across the Bering Sea and plants itself in Siberia with the polar bears and ibex and long-horned goats until it turns into a teeny-tiny glacier.
Because I imagined it. ~ Jandy Nelson

A family man from Siberia
As a father was very inferior
But one operation
Revised the situation
And now he's Mother Superior ~ Spike Milligan

The Romanovs inhabit a world of family rivalry, imperial ambition, lurid glamour, sexual excess and depraved sadism; this is a world where obscure strangers suddenly claim to be dead monarchs reborn, brides are poisoned, fathers torture their sons to death, sons kill fathers, wives murder husbands, a holy man, poisoned and shot, arises, apparently, from the dead, barbers and peasants ascend to supremacy, giants and freaks are collected, dwarfs are tossed, beheaded heads kissed, tongues torn out, flesh knouted off bodies, rectums impaled, children slaughtered; here are fashion-mad nymphomaniacal empresses, lesbian ménage à trois, and an emperor who wrote the most erotic correspondence ever written by a head of state. Yet this is also the empire built by flinty conquistadors and brilliant statesmen that conquered Siberia and Ukraine, took Berlin and Paris, and produced Pushkin, Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky and Dostoevsky; a civilization of towering culture and exquisite beauty. ~ Simon Sebag Montefiore

We'd caught a commuter flight from there to Philadelphia, and from there to Seattle and now Fairbanks. It reminded me a little of the crazy flights I'd had to take from Siberia back to the U.S. That journey had also gone via Seattle. I was starting to believe that city was a gateway to obscure places. ~ Richelle Mead

If we had to preach to thousands year after year, and never rescued but one soul, that one soul would be a full reward for all our labour, for a soul is of countless price. ~ Charles Spurgeon

The Japanese scientists just found a 25,000-year-old mammoth in the ice in Siberia, and they're about to clone it ... You think the Japanese of all people would want nothing to do with prehistoric animals after what happened with Godzilla. ~ Greg Giraldo

Is he really so much like the monster James tracked across Siberia?"
Her eyes popped wide open, and then began flickering wildly from Edward to Seth to me, around and around.
"Not the same?" she snarled in her little girl's soprano. "Impossible! ~ Stephenie Meyer

Oh what a good time I had in prison!" he exclaimed afterward. It had almost been like being back in Siberia again. "You really ought to serve a prison term!" he told Vsevolod Solovyov enthusiastically, when Solovyov visited him in jail. "But Fyodor Mikhailovich, you surely don't think I ought to go out and kill someone just to go to prison?" The writer smiled. "No, of course not.... You'd have to do something else. But quite seriously, a spell in prison would be the best thing that could happen to you." He expressed the same wish for Vsevolod's brother Vladimir: "A spell in a penitentiary would make you into a good and true Christian. ~ Geir Kjetsaa

Look, everything the Communists say about capitalism is true, and everything the capitalists say about Communism is true. The difference is, our system works because it's based on the truth about people's selfishness, and theirs doesn't because it's based on a fairy tale about people's brotherhood. It's such a crazy fairy tale they've got to take people and put them in Siberia in order to get them to believe it. ~ Philip Roth

Jail doesn't teach anyone to do good, nor Siberia, but a man-yes! A man can teach another man to do good-believe me! ~ Maxim Gorky

In 1917 I went to Russia. I was sent to prevent the Bolshevik Revolution and to keep Russia in the war. The reader will know that my efforts did not meet with success. I went to Petrograd from Vladivostok, .One day, on the way through Siberia, the train stopped at some station and the passengers as usual got out, some to fetch water to make tea, some to buy food and others to stretch their legs. A blind soldier was sitting on a bench. Other soldiers sat beside him and more stood behind. There were from twenty to thirty.Their uniforms were torn and stained. The blind soldier, a big vigorous fellow, was quite young. On his cheeks was the soft, pale down of a beard that has never been shaved. I daresay he wasn't eighteen. He had a broad face, with flat, wide features, and on his forehead was a great scar of the wound that had lost him his sight. His closed eyes gave him a strangely vacant look. He began to sing. His voice was strong and sweet. He accompanied himself on an accordion. The train waited and he sang song after song. I could not understand his words, but through his singing, wild and melancholy, I seemed to hear the cry of the oppressed: I felt the lonely steppes and the interminable forests, the flow of the broad Russian rivers and all the toil of the countryside, the ploughing of the land and the reaping of the wild corn, the sighing of the wind in the birch trees, the long months of dark winter; and then the dancing of the women in the villages and the youths bathi ~ W. Somerset Maugham

1908: A massive explosion over Tunguska, Siberia, leveled sixty to eighty million trees over 2,150 square kilometers. Blamed on an asteroid or comet, or Nikola Tesla's Coil. The Bermuda Triangle J ~ Catherine Coulter

Where'd you send her?"
"Siberia. Lovely this time of year. A bit remote, I'm afraid. Might take her weeks to find a town and even longer to arrange transportation back to the States."
My lips quirked. I didn't feel like laughing, but the image of my half-millenium-old grandmother trudging through snow was kind of funny. "You're sick, you know that?"
"What can I day? I thought a cold-hearted bitch like her would feel at home in the tundra. ~ Jaye Wells

My last point about getting started as a writer: do something first, good or bad, successful or not, and write it up before approaching an editor. The best introduction to an editor is your own written work, published or not. I traveled across Siberia on my own money before ever approaching an editor; I wrote my first book, Siberian Dawn, without knowing a single editor, with no idea of how to get it published. I had to risk my life on the Congo before selling my first magazine story. If the rebel spirit dwells within you, you won't wait for an invitation, you'll invade and take no hostages. ~ Jeffery Taylor

Have you heard of the illness hysteria siberiana? Try to imagine this: You're a farmer, living all alone on the Siberian tundra. Day after day you plow your fields. As far as the eye can see, nothing. To the north, the horizon, to the east, the horizon, to the south, to the west, more of the same. Every morning, when the sun rises in the east, you go out to work in your fields. When it's directly overhead, you take a break for lunch. When it sinks in the west, you go home to sleep. And then one day, something inside you dies. Day after day you watch the sun rise in the east, pass across the sky, then sink in the west, and something breaks inside you and dies. You toss your plow aside and, your head completely empty of thought, begin walking toward the west. Heading toward a land that lies west of the sun. Like someone, possessed, you walk on, day after day, not eating or drinking, until you collapse on the ground and die. That's hysteria siberiana. ~ Haruki Murakami

You are going to have a nasty scar," I said as I gently held pressure to stop the bleeding.
"All true warriors wear their scars proudly," he mumbled. "How can I be proud of this one?"
I looked up at him, horrified, as I realized what he meant. "What will your parents say?" I would be sent to Siberia. My whole family would be exiled. If not executed.
He shook his head. "They will know about the count before too long. My father will think that I failed to protect the public from this danger. It is I who fear being sent to Siberia."
"But ... wait. I didn't express my fears out loud, did I?" I dropped his arm and backed away, suddenly spooked by his silvery faerie eyes. "Can you read my thoughts?"
"Sometimes, when I concentrate." He winced and grabbed the bandage from me to apply pressure to the bleeding himself. "You are very easy to read. Most of the time. ~ Robin Bridges

Even in Siberia there is happiness. ~ Anton Chekhov

Probably we'd have been better off born in nineteenth-century Russia. I'd have been Prince So-and-so and you Count Such-and-such. We'd go hunting together, fight, be rivals in love, have our metaphysical complaints, drink beer watching the sunset from the shores of the Black Sea. In our later years, the two of us would be implicated in the Something-or-other Rebellion and exiled to Siberia, where we'd die. Brilliant, don't you think? ~ Haruki Murakami

I knew, starting in 10th grade, I wanted to be in theater and an actor. I went to acting school in Siberia, but there was no future there - and I was consumed with ambition. ~ Andrey Zvyagintsev

Ric stared up at the lion siblings. How Lock hadn't killed them already, he didn't know. If nothing else, Ric would have had them ... managed by now. They'd be alive, but in Siberia. ~ Shelly Laurenston

Really? A dog? Not a noble wolf?"
"No. A dog. Very cuddly, one that likes to be petted."
"Well, that is true." Boris took Hans's hand and brought it down to cup his hard shaft. "I would much rather be petted by you and Thomas than hunt caribou in Siberia. So… the Russian for 'dog' is sabakah."
"Sabakah," Hans repeated.
"But for a pet name, maybe sabakee is better. That means 'doggy.'" Boris grinned at him. With his hair messed up, as usual, and when he was being goofy, he did remind Hans of a 'doggy.'
"That's perfect, sabakee." Hans laughed.
"Puppy," Boris purred.
Then their mouths merged, and Boris found Hans's stiff cock. For a long time, they panted heavily into each other's mouths as they stroked. Before they could climax, Boris broke the kiss and murmured, "Thomas is watching. I think he is jealous."
"There's no reason for him to be alone ~ Jamie Fessenden

The war will not only change the map of the world but it will affect the destiny of every one I care about. Already, even before the war had broken out, we were scattered to the four winds, those of us who had lived and worked together and who had no thought to do anything but what we were doing. My friend X, who used to be terrified at the very mention of war, had volunteered for service in the British Army; my friend Y, who was utterly indifferent and who used to say that he would go right on working at the Bibliothèque Nationale war or no war, joined the Foreign Legion; my friend Z, who was an out and out pacifist, volunteered for ambulance service and has never been heard of since; some are in concentration camps in France and Germany, one is rotting away in Siberia, another is in China, another in Mexico, another in Australia. When we meet again some will be blind, some legless, some old and white-haired, some demented, some bitter and cynical. Maybe the world will be a better place to live in, maybe it'll be just the same, maybe it'll be worse than it is now - who knows? The strangest thing of all is that in a universal crisis of this sort one instinctively knows that certain ones are doomed and that others will be spared. ~ Henry Miller

The muttered hint, "Remember, you have a stroke here," freezes my joints like a blast from Siberia. ~ John Updike

I know." She sighed. "We'll all say that. We'll all go on and make the place safe. Roads, cities. New sky, new soil. Until it's all some kind of Siberia or Northwest Territories, and Mars will be gone and we'll be here, and we'll wonder why we feel so empty. Why when we look at the land we can never see anything but our own faces. ~ Kim Stanley Robinson

Once the 'portals of the future close - in Amazonia, Siberia or the Arctic - we will find ourselves powerless to affect the outcome of this dreadful tale. ~ Mark Lynas

The day I arrived in Yakutsk with my colleague Peter Osnos of The Washington Post, it was 46 below. When our plane landed, the door was frozen solidly shut, and it took about half an hour for a powerful hot-air blower- standard equipment at Siberian airports- to break the icy seal. Stepping outside was like stepping onto another planet, for at those low temperatures nothing seems quite normal. The air burns. Sounds are brittle. Every breath hovers in a strangle slow-motion cloud, adding to the mist of ice that pervades the city and blurs the sun. When the breath freezes into ice dust and falls almost silently to the ground, Siberians call it the whisper of stars. ~ David K. Shipler

Siberia taught Dostoyevsky much that would be fictionalized in Demons, including criminal speech, the criminal mind and the ways of officialdom. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Ah, Belikov," said Abe, shaking Dimitri's hand. "I'd been hoping we'd run into each other. I'd really like to get to know you better. Maybe we can set aside some time to talk, learn more about life, love, et cetera. Do you like to hunt? You seem like a hunting man. That's what we should do sometime. I know a great spot in the woods. Far, far away. We could make a day of it. I've certainly got a lot of question to ask you. A lot of things I'd like to tell you."
I shot a panicked look at my mother, silently begging her to stop this. Abe had spent a good deal of time talking to Adrian when we dated, explaining in vivid and gruesome detail exactly how Abe expected his daughter to be treated. I did not want Abe taking Dimitri off alone into the wilderness, especially if firearms were involved.
"Actually," said my mum casually."I'd like to come along. I also have a number of questions-especially about when you two were back at St. Vladimir's."
"Don't you guys have somewhere to be?" I asked hastily. "We're about to start."
That, at least, was true. Nearly everyone was in formation, and the crowd was quieting. "of course," said Abe. To my astonishment, he brushed a kiss over my forehead before stepping away. "I'm glad you're back." Then, with a wink, he said to Dimitri:"Looking forward to our chat."
"Run," I said when they were gone. "If you slip out now, maybe they won't notice. Go back to Siberia. ~ Richelle Mead

This was the sickness of the age, the revolutionary madness of the epoch. In thought everyone was different from his words and outward show. No one had a clear conscience. Each with good reason could feel himself guilty, a secret criminal, an unexposed deceiver. ~ Boris Pasternak

Sin: I've survived a winter in Siberia when I was ten.
Boyd: what were you doing there at ten years old?
Sin: searching for Santa Claus. ~ Santino Hassell

Friend," replied Michael Strogoff, "Heaven reward thee for all thou hast done for me!"
"Only fools expect reward on earth," replied the mujik. ~ Jules Verne

Russia will make new allegiances. Siberia, unfreezing, will become a land grab. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

It reflects like an optical instrument and responds to changes in the weather so sensitively that it seems like a part of the sky rather than of the land. And along with all that, Baikal is distinctly Asiatic: if a camel caravan could somehow transport Baikal across Siberia to Europe, and curious buyers unwrapped it in a marketplace, none would mistake it for a lake from around there. ~ Ian Frazier

Many climate scientists say their biggest fear is that warming could melt the Arctic permafrost - which stretches for thousands of miles across Alaska, Canada, and Siberia. ~ Michael Specter

They dream of the happiness of stretching out one's legs and of the relief one feels after going to the toilet. In Orotukan the earth thaws only in the summer and only to the depth of three feet - and only then can they bury the bones of those who died during the winter. And you have the right to arrange your own life under the blue sky and the hot sun, to get a drink of water, to stretch, to travel wherever you like without a convoy [escort]. So what's this about unwiped feet? And what's this about a mother-in-law? What about the main thing in life, all its riddles? If you want, I'll spell it out for you right now. Do not pursue what is illusory - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing. It is enough if you don't freeze in the cold and if thirst and hunger don't claw at your insides. If your back isn't broken, if your feet can walk, if both arms can bend, if both eyes see, if both ears hear, then whom should you envy? And why? Our envy of others devours us most of all. Rub your eyes and purify your heart - and prize above all else in the world those who love you and who wish you well. Do not hurt them or scold them, and never part from any of them in anger; after all, ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The rain forest has Sting. Now Siberia has Jack Dee. Someone had to draw the short straw. In this case it was the rain forest. ~ Jack Dee

The Arctic Ocean encircles with a belt of eternal ice the desert confines of Siberia and North America
the uttermost limits of the Old and New worlds, separated by the narrow, channel, known as Behring's Straits. ~ Eugene Sue

Bloody global warming. Funny breed us Brits. We moan when it rains cats and dogs and complain when it's too hot. Let the protestors emigrate to bleeding Siberia. That's what I say, eh? ~ Anthony Hulse

It is a remarkable fact that smallpox, a scourge for thousands of years, has now vanished from the earth, except for two tiny vials, one locked in a highly secure facility at the Centers for Disease Control, in Atlanta, and another stored in a similarly secure vault in Siberia. ~ Michael Specter

I only saw one English-speaking person all the way across Siberia. ~ Ian Frazier

There is something in this January Siberian landscape that overpowers, oppresses, stuns. Above all, it is its enormity, its boundlessness, its oceanic limitlessness. The earth has no end here; the world has no end. Man is no created for such measureless. For him a comfortable, palpable, serviceable measure is the measure of his village, his field, street, house. At sea, the size of the ship's deck will be such a measure. Man is created for the kind of space that he can traverse at one try, with a single effort. ~ Ryszard Kapuscinski

I want you to read 'God Sees the Truth, but Waits,' " said Mother. "Tolstoy writes about a man, wrongly accused of a murder, who spends the rest of his life in a prison camp. Twenty-six years later, as a convict in Siberia, he meets the true murderer and has an opportunity to free himself, but chooses not to. His longing for home leaves him and he dies." I ask Mother why this story matters to her. "Each of us must face our own Siberia," she says. "We must come to peace within our own isolation. No one can rescue us. My cancer is my Siberia." Suddenly, two white birds about the size of finches, dart in front of us and land on the snow. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

Siberia: it fills one twelfth of the land-mass of the whole Earth, yet this is all it leaves for certain in the mind. A bleak beauty, and an indelible fear. ~ Colin Thubron

The Chukchee, a people indigenous to Siberia, had their own special way of dealing with unruly winds. A Chukchee man would chant, "Western Wind, look here! Look down on my buttocks. We are going to give you some fat. Cease blowing!" The nineteenth-century European visitor who reported this ritual described it as follows: "The man pronouncing the incantation lets his breeches fall down, and bucks leeward, exposing his bare buttocks to the wind. At every word he claps his hands. ~ Robert Wright

Since the last tour I have done a lot of extensive travel to Iraq, Kuwait, Siberia, South Korea and other places and picked up some hopefully interesting stories. We are living in interesting times and as bad as things are, I draw considerable inspiration from some of the things I'm seeing and people I'm meeting. I'm looking forward to getting out on the road and talking about it all. ~ Henry Rollins

It turns out that there are swaths of habitat in the north of Siberia and Yukon that actually could house a mammoth. Remember, this was a highly plastic animal that lived over tremendous climate variation. ~ Hendrik Poinar

British Columbia, the genteel Siberia, that was neither genteel nor a Siberia, but an undiscovered, perhaps an undiscoverable Paradise ~ Malcolm Lowry

I am the lead on NBC's 'Siberia,' and I loved that experience. ~ Joyce Giraud