Top 100 Bulgakov Quotes
#1. I write what I can. I think being able to write like Michael Connelly and have a character that goes from novel to novel, or to dramatize history like Vidal or Ellroy, or have an explosively inventive mind like Bulgakov, would be an incredible thing. I don't have that. I only have what I have.
Henry Rollins
#2. Better not sit on a hedgehog if you're naked." ~ Russian Author Mikhail Bulgakov ~ The White Guard 1925
T.C. Donivan
#3. I love Mikhail Bulgakov. He is very original and takes the story to unexpected places. I didn't realise political writing could be so funny.
Denise Mina
#4. Bulgakov always loved clowning and agreed with E. T. A. Hoffmann that irony and buffoonery are expressions of 'the deepest contemplation of life in all its conditionality
Mikhail Bulgakov
#5. She had a passion for all people who did anything to perfection.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#6. I wouldn't like to meet you when you've got a revolver, said Margarita with a coquettish look at Azazello. She had a passion for people who did things well.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#7. Don't be afraid, Queen ... don't be afraid, Queen, the blood has long since gone into the earth. And where it was spilled, grapevines are already growing.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#8. Sweetly, albeit hoarsely and with a burr, the girl started singing something scarcely comprehensible, but, judging by the women's faces in the stalls, very seductive:
Guerlain, Chanel no 5, Mitsuko, Narcissus noir, evening dresses, cocktail dresses..
Mikhail Bulgakov
#9. You pronounced your words as if you don't acknowledge the shadows, or the evil either. Would you be so kind as to give a little thought to the question of what your good would be doing if evil did not exist, and how the earth would look if the shadows were to disappear from it?
Mikhail Bulgakov
#10. Once more and for the last time, the moon flashed above and broke into pieces, and then everything went black.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#11. In the first few seconds an aching sadness wrenched his heart, but it soon gave way to a feeling of sweet disquiet, the excitement of gypsy wanderlust
Mikhail Bulgakov
#12. love leaped out at us like a murderer jumping out of a dark alley.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#13. Punch a man on the nose, kick an old man downstairs, shoot somebody or any old thing like that, that's my job. But argue with women in love - no thank you!
Mikhail Bulgakov
#14. Most bad," the host concluded. "If you ask me, something sinister lurks in men who avoid wine, games, the company of lovely women, and dinnertime conversation. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly detest everyone around them.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#16. It is hereby certified that the bearer, Nikolai Ivanovich, spent the
said night at Satan's ball, having been summoned there in the capacity of a means of transportation ... make a parenthesis, Hella, in the parenthesis put "hog". Signed - Behemoth.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#17. The most amazing combinations can result if you shuffle the pack enough.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#18. He looked to be a little over forty. Mouth somehow twisted. Clean-shaven. Dark-haired. Right eye black, left -for some reason- green. Dark eyebrows, but one higher than the other. In short, a foreigner.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#19. Second freshness - that's what is nonsense! There is only one freshness - the first - and it is also the last. And if sturgeon is of the second freshness, that means it is simply rotten.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#20. The streetlights had already lit up on Bronnaya, and a golden moon hung over the Patriarchs. In the ever deceiving lunar light, it appeared to Ivan Nikolayevich that, instead of a cane, the professor stood holding a sword under his arm.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#21. Margarita was never short of money. She could buy whatever she liked. Her husband had plenty of interesting friends. Margarita never had to cook. Margarita knew nothing of the horrors of living in a shared flat. In short ... was she happy? Not for a moment.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#22. There is, if you don't mind my saying so, something sinister about men who avoid wine, games, the company of charming women, and good dinner-table conversation. People like that are either seriously ill or they secretly disdain their fellow men.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#23. Not fooling around, not bothering nobody, just sitting here mending the Primus," said the cat with a hostile frown, "and, moreover, I consider it my duty to warn you that the cat is an ancient, inviolable animal.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#24. Cowardice was undoubtedly one of the most terrible vices - thus spoke Yeshua Ha-Nozri. 'No, philosopher, I disagree with you: it is the most terrible vice!
Mikhail Bulgakov
#25. The toads bellowed mournfully, and the twilight was enrobing the professor. Here it was ... the night. Moscow ... white lamps turning on somewhere outside ... Lost and miserable, Pankrat stood fearfully at attention, arms at his sides ...
Mikhail Bulgakov
#26. Ah, professor, if only you had discovered a way of rejuvenating hair! Chapter 2
Mikhail Bulgakov
#27. Do I express my thoughts lucidly?
I think I do.
What is my life? An absurdity.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#28. Don't be afraid, your majesty ... Don't be afraid, your majesty, the blood has long since drained away into the earth and grapes have grown on the spot.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#30. But what can be done, the one who loves must share the fate of the one he loves.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#32. I hereby certify that the bearer of this note, Nikolai Ivanovich, spent the night in question at Satan's ball, having been lured there in a transportational capacity ... Hella, put in parentheses! And write 'hog.' Signed- Behemoth.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#33. Why do smart people exist, if not to figure out convoluted problems?
Mikhail Bulgakov
#34. Don't be afraid, Queen, the blood has long run down into the earth. And on the spot where it was spilled, grapevines are growing today.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#35. Why bother to learn to read when you can smell meat a mile away? Chapter 2
Mikhail Bulgakov
#36. My writing is progressing slowly, but at least it's moving forward. I'm sure that's the case. The only problem is that I'm never absolutely certain that what I've written is any good.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#37. The hope that there she would manage to regain her happiness made her fearless
Mikhail Bulgakov
#38. Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal - there's the trick!
Mikhail Bulgakov
#39. She was carrying these revolting, disturbing yellow flowers. God knows what they're called, but for some reason they're the first to appear in Moscow. And these flowers stood out very distinctly from her black spring coat. She was carrying yellow flowers!
Mikhail Bulgakov
#40. The cat, covered in dust and standing on its hind legs, bowed to Margarita. Round its neck it was now wearing a made-up white bow tie on an elastic band, with a pair of ladies' mother-of-pearl binoculars hanging on a cord. It had also gilded its whiskers.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#41. Once upon a time there was a lady. She had no children, and no happiness either. And at first she cried for a long time, but then she became wicked ...
Mikhail Bulgakov
#43. Nobody should be whipped. Remember that, once and for all. Neither man nor animal can be influenced by anything but suggestion.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#44. One can find time for everything if one is never in a hurry,' explained his host didactically. Chapter 3
Mikhail Bulgakov
#45. The whole horror of the situation is that he now has a human heart, not a dog's heart. And about the rottenest heart in all creation!
Mikhail Bulgakov
#46. Have just been run over by tram-car at Patriarch's Ponds funeral Friday three pm come. Berlioz.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#47. Man is mortal and, as has rightly been said, unexpectedly mortal.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#48. Never ask for anything! Never for anything, and especially from those who are stronger than you. They'll make the offer themselves, and give everything themselves.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#49. Just like a murderer jumps of nowhere in an ally, love jumped out in front of us and struck us both at once
Mikhail Bulgakov
#50. They were arguing about something very complex and important, and neither of them could refute the other. They did not agree with each other in anything, and that made their argument especially interesting and endless.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#52. The procurator studied the new arrival with avid, and slightly fearful eyes. It was the kind of look one gives someone one has heard of and thought a lot about, and whom one is meeting for the first time.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#53. Annushka has already bought the sunflower oil, and has not only bought it, but has already spilled it.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#54. "We speak different languages, as usual," responded Woland, "but this does not change the things we speak about. Well? ... "
Mikhail Bulgakov
#55. You are not Dostoevsky,' said the woman ...
'You never can tell ... ' he answered.
'Dostoevsky is dead,' the woman said, a bit uncertainly.
'I protest!' he said with heat, 'Dostoevsky is immortal!
Mikhail Bulgakov
#57. All the words he used in the beginning were gutter words. He heard them and stored them in his brain. Now, as I walk in the street, I look at dogs with secret horror. WHo knows what is hidden in their heads?
Mikhail Bulgakov
#58. Pogroms were whipped up every minute and people were murdered daily, especially Jews of course.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#59. If it is true that cowardice is the most grave vice, then the dog, at least, is not guilty of it.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#61. Ah, what stars there are in the Ukraine. I've been living in Moscow almost seven years, but I still feel drawn to my homeland. My heart aches, I get a terrible urge to board a train and be off. To see the cliffs covered in
Mikhail Bulgakov
#62. What would your good do if evil didn't exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared?
Mikhail Bulgakov
#63. It must be added that from his first words the foreigner made a repellent impression on the poet, but Berlioz rather liked him - that is, not liked but ... how to put it ... was interested, or whatever.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#64. You spoke your words as though you denied the very existence of the shadows or of evil. Think, now: where would your good be if there were no evil and what would the world look like without shadow?
Mikhail Bulgakov
#65. The buckets emptied quickly, and men from different squads took turns bringing water from the gully that lay towards the city, where, in the feeble shade of emaciated mulberries, a muddy stream lived out its last days in the diabolical heat.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#67. But this is what disturbs me: if there is no God, then, the question is, who is in control of man's life and the whole order of things on earth?
Mikhail Bulgakov
#68. Allow me to inquire how man can control his own affairs when he is not only incapable of compiling a plan for some laughably short term such as, say, a thousand years, but cannot even predict what will happen to him tomorrow?
Mikhail Bulgakov
#70. Happiness is like good health: when you have it, you don't notice it. But as the years go by, oh, the memories, the memories of happiness past!
Mikhail Bulgakov
#71. What is all this? Get him out of here, devil take me!" And that one, imagine, smiles and says: "Devil take you? That, in fact, can be done!" And - bang!
Mikhail Bulgakov
#73. Actually, I do happen to resemble a hallucination. Kindly note my silhouette in the moonlight." The cat climbed into the shaft of moonlight and wanted to keep talking but was asked to be quiet. "Very well, I shall be silent," he replied, "I shall be a silent hallucination.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#74. Aren't there enough plays already? There are such lovely plays and so many of them. If you were to start playing them you couldn't get through them all in twenty years. Why do you want to write? It must be so upsetting!
Mikhail Bulgakov
#75. This twenty-year-old boy was distinguished from childhood by strange qualities, a dreamer and an eccentric. A girl fell in love with him, and he went and sold her to a brothel ...
Mikhail Bulgakov
#77. Foreign visitors ... how impressed you all are with foreign visitors! But they come in many different varieties.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#78. Well, as everyone knows, once witchcraft gets started, there's no stopping it.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#79. There is absolutely no necessity to learn how to read; meat smells a mile off, anyway.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#80. She gave a little jump and hung in the air a little way above the rug, then she slowly began to be drawn downwards and dropped ..
Mikhail Bulgakov
#81. Jesus to Pilate:
"The trouble is," the bound man went on, not stopping by anyone, "that you are too closed off and have definitely lost faith in people. You must agree, one can't place all one's affection in a dog. Your life is impoverished, Hegemon.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#82. I had the pleasure of meeting that young man at the Patriarch's Ponds. He almost drove me mad myself, proving to me that I don't exist. But you do believe that it is really I?
Mikhail Bulgakov
#83. What's the use of dying in a ward surrounded by a lot of groaning and croaking incurables? Wouldn't it be much better to throw a party with that twenty-seven thousand and take poison and depart for the other world to the sound of violins, surrounded by lovely drunken girls and happy friends?
Mikhail Bulgakov
#85. Not causing trouble, not touching anything, fixing the primus.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#86. Follow me, reader! Who told you that there is no true, faithful, eternal love in this world! May the liar's vile tongue be cut out! Follow me, my reader, and me alone, and I will show you such a love!
Mikhail Bulgakov
#89. Azazello begged her not to worry, assuring her that he had seen not only naked women but also women with their skin flayed clean off
Mikhail Bulgakov
#90. The time had come to act, to drink the bitter cup of responsibility.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#92. I challenge you to a duel! screamed the cat, sailing over their heads on the swinging chandelier.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#94. He's clever,' thought Ivan,' I must admit there are some smart people even among the intelligentsia
Mikhail Bulgakov
#95. Clever people have been pointing out for a long time that happiness is like good health: when it's there, you don't notice it. But when the years have passed, how you do remember happiness, oh, how you do remember it!
Mikhail Bulgakov
#96. Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#97. This whole speech, extremely silly, tactless and probably politically dangerous, made Pavel Iosifovich shake with rage, but, strange as it might seem, it could be seen from the eyes of the crowd of customers that had gathered that it had aroused sympathy in very many people!
Mikhail Bulgakov
#98. But why don't you take him with you into the light?
He does not deserve the light, he deserves peace
Mikhail Bulgakov
#99. I suppose that in no educational institution can one become an educated person.
Mikhail Bulgakov
#100. Twelve men conducted the investigation, gathering as on a knitting-needle the accursed stitches of this complicated case all over Moscow.
Mikhail Bulgakov
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