Isaac Babel

A well-thought-out story doesn’t need to resemble real life. Life itself tries with all its might to resemble a well-crafted story.

— Isaac Babel

“If the world could write itself, it would write like Tolstoy.”

— Isaac Babel

No iron can stab the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place.

— Isaac Babel

“We slept, all six of us, beneath a wooden roof that let in the stars, warming one another, our legs intermingled. I…

— Isaac Babel

For me the whole world is like a gigantic theater in which I am the only spectator without opera glasses. The orchestra…

— Isaac Babel

There is no iron that can enter the human heart with such stupefying effect, as a period placed at just the right…

— Isaac Babel

“No iron spike can pierce a human heart as icily as a period in the right place.”

— Isaac Babel

“Do you remember Zhitomir, Vasily? Do you remember the Teterev, Vasily, and that evening when the Sabbath, the young Sabbath tripped stealthily…

— Isaac Babel

She would lift her peignoir above her knees and say to her husband: 'Give baby a kiss...'

— Isaac Babel

No iron can pierce the human heart as chillingly as a full stop placed at the right time.

— Isaac Babel

The orange sky is rolling across the sky like a severed head, gentle light glimmers in the ravines among the clouds, the…

— Isaac Babel

When a phrase is born, it is both good and bad at the same time. The secret of its success rests in…

— Isaac Babel

A phrase is born into the world both good and bad at the same time. The secret lies in a slight, an…

— Isaac Babel

Even at the time—twenty years old—I said to myself: better to go hungry, to go to prison, to be a tramp, than…

— Isaac Babel

How late I learned the essential things in life! In my childhood, nailed to the Gemara, I led the life of a…

— Isaac Babel

No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place.

— Isaac Babel

“Her sponge cakes had the aroma of crucifixion.Within them was the sap of slyness and the fragrant frenzy of the Vatican.”

— Isaac Babel