Ilya Ilf Quotes

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

Ilya Ilf

#2. 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

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

Ilya Ilf

#4. 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

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

Ilya Ilf

#6. 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

#7. Growing up surrounded by thieves and murderers, she'd had enough of that whatever-it-takes-to-win mindset to last a billion lifetimes. All she wanted was a little slice of truth, somewhere peaceful to lay her head, and the knowledge that the people she loved were safe from Rolf's vindictive reach.

Avery Flynn

#8. Besides language and music mathematics is one of the primary manifestations of the free creative power of the human mind.

Hermann Weyl

#9. Marriage is the agreement to let a family happen.

Betty Jane Wylie

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

Ilya Ilf

#11. 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

#12. The spiritual aspect of my work has more to do with the sense that things in the world can be perceived and accepted as being in some respect alive. I try to approach everything that I photograph with this sense of wide-eyed awe.

Abelardo Morell

#13. 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

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

Ilya Ilf

#15. 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

#16. 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

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

Ilya Ilf

#18. 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

#19. If you've been in a film that's seen by millions and millions and millions of people, you're more likely to be recognized for that than for your theater performances, which were seen by considerably less people. Why would I get upset by that?

Ian McKellen

#20. 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

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

Ilya Ilf

#22. 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

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

Ilya Ilf

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

Ilya Ilf

#25. The church generation in which Jesus returns will actively participate in this revolution ... My premise: Many people alive today will see this revolution in their lifetime.

Mike Bickle

#26. More flow'rs I noted, yet I none could see
But sweet or color it had stol'n from thee.

William Shakespeare

#27. 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