Quote by Owen Matthews

“The most basic, most rudimentary spiritual need of the Russian people is the need for suffering, ever-present and unquenchable, everywhere and in everything.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

“There is no happiness like this: quiet mornings, light from the river, the weekend ahead. They lived a Russian life, a rich life, interwoven,…

— james salter

“The astute journalist had commented that Russians enjoy themselves without smiling, always taking their pleasure sadly.”

— Elise Blackwell

“mediocrity is a constant, as one Russian writer put it. Russians have a way with aphorisms. They probably spend all winter thinking them up.”

— Haruki Murakami

“...my longing was for Russia...Not Soviet Russia. But nineteenth-century Russia, the Russia of Dostoevsky's saintly prostitutes and Alyosha; of Tolstoy's Pierre; and Aksionov, the…

— Guy Vanderhaeghe

“Entire civilizations in history had ceased to exist. How had life in them felt in the last decades and days? Russia and the Russians…

— Masha Gessen

“About Russia: Ironically, in the country where common people’s dislike and fear of their state takes place, we can hear much more talks about…

— Leo Pevsner

“I suddenly realised that the devout Russian people no longer needed priests to pray them into heaven. On earth they were building a kingdom…

— John Reed

“Here was the Russia she'd loved since childhood, the dark, violent, passionate place where the life of the mind and spirit were as real…

— Natalie Standiford

We Russians have assigned ourselves no other task in life but the cultivation of our own personalities, and when we're barely past childhood, we…

— Ivan Turgenev

“As we walk out to the street my friend points out a sign on the other side of the road, which instructs people to…

— Greg Hopkinson

“Russians consider themselves civilized Europeans, but have to endure the humiliation of daily encounters with officials that belong in a squalid dictatorship.”

— Oliver Bullough