If we have no heretics we must invent them, for heresy is essential to health and growth.

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

I looked silently at her lips. All women are lips, all lips. Some are pink and firmly round: a ring, a tender guardrail from the whole world. And then there are these: a second ago they weren’t here, and just now — like a knife-slit — they are here, still dripping sweet blood.

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

I'm like a machine being run over its RPM limit: The bearings are overheating - a minute longer, and the metal is going to melt and start dripping and that'll be the end of everything. I need a quick splash of cold water, logic. Furthermore, I pour it on in buckets, but the logic hisses on the hot bearings and dissipates in the air as a fleeting white mist. Well, of course, it's clear that you can't establish a function without taking into account what its limit is. And it's also clear that what I felt yesterday, that stupid "dissolving in the universe," if you take it to its limit, is death. Because that's exactly what death is - the fullest possible dissolving of myself into the universe. Hence, if we let L stand for love and D for death, then L = f (D), i.e., love and death...

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

I'm like a machine being run over its RPM limit. The bearings are overheating: a minute longer and the metal will melt and start dripping and that will be the end of everything. I need a splash of cold water, logic; I pour it on in buckets but the logic hisses on the hot bearings and dissipates in the air as a fleeting white mist

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

In the ancient world, this was understood by the Christians, our only (if very imperfect) predecessors: Humility is a virtue, pride a vice; We come from God, I from the Devil.

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

In the widely open cup of the armchair was I-330. I, on the floor, embracing her limbs, my head on her lap. We were silent. Everything was silent. Only the pulse was audible. Like a crystal I was dissolving in her, in I-330. I felt most distinctly how the polished facets which limited me in space were slowly thawing, melting away. I was dissolving in her lap, in her, and I became at once smaller and larger, and larger, embraceable. For she was not she but the whole universe. For a second I and that armchair near the bed, transfixed with joy, we were one.

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

It is said there are flowers that bloom only once in a hundred years. Why should there not be some that bloom once in a thousand, in ten thousand years? Perhaps we never know about them simply because this "once in a thousand years" has come today.

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

I walked alone through the twilit street. The wind was whirling, driving, carrying me like a slip of paper. Fragments of cast-iron sky flew and flew-they had another day, two days to hurtle through infinity… The units of passersby brushed against me, but I walked alone. I saw it clearly: everyone was saved, but there was no salvation for me. I did not want salvation …"(c)

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

Knowledge, absolutely sure of its infallibility, is faith

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

Latchkey! I mean. . . I want to talk to you. . .' He fell silent, glancing behind him and shifting from foot to foot, his waterproof trousers rattling like the bulls' bladders that boys use to learn swimming. Sterling angrily spat out his cigarette. 'Well? What about?' 'A. . . About a secret matter, ' Alysha whispered. Dozens of ears floated around them in the dust waves; the whisper was heard, and it ran on like a spark along a gunpowder wick. Alysha's secret message, the mysterious special clothing, the deacon's catastrophe-all this was too much. The atmosphere was charged with thousands of volts, and something was needed to discharge the electricity, to clear the air. ("X")

— Yevgeny Zamyatin