Darkness. The door into the neighboring room is not quite shut. A strip of light stretches through the crack in the door across the ceiling. People are walking about by lamplight. Something has happened. The strip moves faster and faster and the dark walls move further and further apart, into infinity. This room is London and there are thousands of doors. The lamps dart about and the strips dart across the ceiling. And perhaps it is all delirium... Something had happened. The black sky above London burst into fragments: white triangles, squares and lines - the silent geometric delirium of searchlights. The blinded elephant buses rushed somewhere headlong with their lights extinguished. The distinct patter along the asphalt of belated couples, like a feverish pulse, died away. Everywhere doors slammed and lights were put out. And the city lay deserted, hollow, geometric, swept clean by a sudden plague: silent domes, pyramids, circles, arches, towers, battlements.

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

Don't forget that we lawyers, we're a higher breed of intellect, and so it's our privilege to lie. It's as clear as day. Animals can't even imagine lying: if you were to find yourself among some wild islanders, they too would only speak the truth until they learned about European culture.

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

Do you believe that you will die? Yes man is mortal I am a man ergo... no that isn't what I mean. I know that you know that. What I am asking is, have you ever actually believed it? Believed it completely? Believed not with your mind but with your body? Actually felt that one the fingers now holding this very piece of paper will be icy and yellow? No, of course you don't believe it. Which is the reason why up until now you haven't jumped from the tenth floor to the pavement.

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

Do you believe that you will die? Yes, man is mortal, I am a man, ergo... No, that isn't what I mean. I know that you know that. What I'm asking is: Have you ever actually believed it, believe it completely, believe not with your mind but with your body, actually felt that one day the fingers now holding this very piece of paper will be yellow and icy...?

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

Gripped with bitter cold, ice-locked, Petersburg burned in delirium. One knew: out there, invisible behind the curtain of fog, the red and yellow columns, spires, and hoary gates and fences crept on tiptoe, creaking and shuffling. A fevered, impossible, icy sun hung in the fog - to the left, to the right, above, below - a dove over a house on fire. From the delirium-born, misty world, dragon men dived up into the earthly world, belched fog - heard in the misty world as words, but here becoming nothing - round white puffs of smoke. The dragon men dived up and disappeared again into the fog. And trolleys rushed screeching out of the earthly world into the unknown. ("The Dragon")

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

Happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative.

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

Heretics are the only [bitter] remedy against the entropy of human thought.("Literature, Revolution, and Entropy")

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

How do you know nonsense isn't a good thing? If human nonsense had been nurtured and developed for centuries, just as intelligence has, then perhaps something extraordinarily previous could have come from it.

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

I am like a machine being driven to excessive rotations: the bearings are incandescent and, in a minute, melted metal will begin to drip and everything will turn to nothing. Quick: get cold water, logic. I am pouring it over myself by the bucket load but the logic sizzles on the hot bearings and dissipates elusive white steam into the air.

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

If human foolishness had been as carefully nurtured and cultivated as intelligence has been for centuries, perhaps it would have turned into something extremely precious.

— Yevgeny Zamyatin