Ilf Quotes

#1. Investigating Koreiko's case might take a long time," said Ostap. "God only knows how long. And since there is no God, nobody knows. We are in a terrible bind.

Ilya Ilf

#2. Vorobyaninov, I've got a pressing artistic task for you,' he whispered. 'Go over to the exit from the first-class hallway and stand there. If somebody approaches, start singing, loudly.'
The old man was taken aback. 'But what should I sing?'
'Not "God Save the Tsar," that's for sure!

Ilya Ilf

#3. We start to create enduring happiness when we cease to complain about anything and try to find the remedies for everything.

Debasish Mridha

#4. She was, after all, a mattress owner and understood the subtleties of life.

Ilya Ilf

#5. Pushkin wrote Turkish poems and he was never in Turkey.

Ilya Ilf

#6. If you should attempt to maintain that film is an art in conversation with a cultured, intelligent American, he'll just plain stop talking to you.

Ilya Ilf

#7. Clearly it's not all that pacific on the Pacific Ocean

Ilya Ilf

#8. Maybe we could make it to Stalingrad on twenty rubles. But how would we eat? Vitamins, my dear comrade marshal, don't get handed out for free.

Ilya Ilf

#9. He was only thirty-eight. His body was clean, well-fed, and benign. He had all his teeth. A fresh Armenian joke stirred in his head like a child in its mother's womb. He thought life was wonderful.

Ilya Ilf

#10. Popery is the gospel transubstantiated into the flesh and blood of Paganism, under a few of the accidents of Christianity.

James Aitken Wylie

#11. If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection.

Patrick Rothfuss

#12. California is the most reactionary state in America. Fascist sentiments are very strong here.

Ilya Ilf

#13. I can't wait to get back to writing today so I can see what happens next
Kim Cormack

Kim Cormack

#14. A Spaniard and a Pole worked in the barbershop where we got our hair cut. An Italian shined our shoes. A Croat washed our car. This was America.

Ilya Ilf

#15. Just because you talk about it or advocate for one position doesn't mean you care more. Just because someone doesn't talk about it and advocates a different position doesn't mean they care less.

Donna Lynn Hope

#16. No one likes us, unless you count Criminal Investigations, which also doesn't like us.

Ilya Ilf

#17. It's so easy to get caught up in this weird life. This isn't normal and I'm not singing for people that live my life. I'm singing to the life I used to have. The life I want to have again.

Carrie Underwood

#18. The way people used to kiss before the age of historical materialism.

Ilya Ilf

#19. I think that nerds, if you want to call them that, have only gotten more hip and assimilated into the culture.

Al Yankovic

#20. A week ago, the Water Rescue Society had held an evening there, as evidenced by the slogan hanging on the wall: THE CAUSE OF HELPING THE DROWNING IS IN THE HANDS OF THE DROWNING THEMSELVES.

Ilya Ilf

#21. If you gave up, you've already lost. If you keep going, you get to a new level.

Lyoto Machida

#22. Let's put it to a vote. Shall the ballots be open or secret?"
"We don't need Soviet-style voting," Charushnikov said, offended. "Let's vote the honest way, the European way: secret ballots.

Ilya Ilf

#23. Podkolyosin asked tragically, Why are you keeping quiet, like the League of Nations?

Ilya Ilf

#24. Being a mother is probably the most important thing in my life right now.

Halle Berry

#25. Magic and religion are ultimately experiential in nature and should be treated as such.

Nevill Drury

#26. But the editor in chief was already balding and worked a lot. He was at the mercy of his family and apartment. He enjoyed lying down on the couch for a spell after dinner and reading Pravda before bed.

Ilya Ilf

#27. Everyone drank to popular education and to the irrigation of Uzbekistan.

Ilya Ilf

#28. Don't teach me how to live. I'm wicked now. I have money. But I'm magnanimous. I'll give you twenty rubles and three days to sack the city! I'm like Suvorov! Plunder the city, Kisa! Have fun!

Ilya Ilf

#29. This (San Francisco) is the most beautiful city in America, Probably because it looks nothing like America

Ilya Ilf

#30. There will be no beautiful widow with Persian eyes sitting at your grave. And teary-eyed kids won't be asking: "Papa, papa, can you hear us?

Ilya Ilf