Isaac Babel Quotes

13 quotes in 265 categories

• She would lift her peignoir above her knees and say to her husband: 'Give baby a kiss...'
• There is no iron that can enter the human heart with such stupefying effect, as a period placed at just the right moment.
• No iron can pierce the human heart as chillingly as a full stop placed at the right time.
• The orange sky is rolling across the sky like a severed head, gentle light glimmers in the ravines among the clouds, the banners of the…
• For me the whole world is like a gigantic theater in which I am the only spectator without opera glasses. The orchestra plays the prelude…
• A phrase is born into the world both good and bad at the same time. The secret lies in a slight, an almost invisible twist.…
• If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy.
• No iron can stab the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place.
• Even at the time—twenty years old—I said to myself: better to go hungry, to go to prison, to be a tramp, than to sit at…
• When a phrase is born, it is both good and bad at the same time. The secret of its success rests in a crux that…
• 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.
• No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place.
• How late I learned the essential things in life! In my childhood, nailed to the Gemara, I led the life of a sage, and it…

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