One is the much-quoted ‘Manuscripts don’t burn’, which seems to express an absolute trust in the triumph of poetry, imagination, the free word, over terror and oppression, and could thus become a watchword of the intelligentsia. The publication of The Master and Margarita was taken as a proof of the assertion.

— Mikhail Bulgakov

Mikhail Bulgakov Quotes

A morphine addict has one piece of good fortune, which nobody can take away from him – the capacity to spend his life in total solitude. And solitude means important, significant ideas, it means contemplation, tranquillity, wisdom...

— Mikhail Bulgakov

I must give due praise to the man who first extracted morphine from poppyheads. He was a true benefactor of mankind. The pain stopped seven minutes after the injection. Interesting: the pain passed over me in ceaseless waves, so that I had to gasp for breath, as though a red-hot crowbar were being thrust into my stomach and rotated. Four minutes after the injection I was able to distinguish the wave-like nature of the pain.

— Mikhail Bulgakov

Do you know with whom you are presently speaking?’ Woland asked the visitor. Whose guest are you? ‘I do,’ replied the master, ‘my neighbour in the madhouse was that boy, Ivan Homeless. He told me about you.’ ‘Ah, yes, yes,’ Woland responded, ‘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

What you say is true,’ the master observed, struck by the neatness of Koroviev’s work, ’that if there are no papers, there’s no person. I have no papers, so there’s precisely no me.

— Mikhail Bulgakov

Soon the room had that desolate look that comes from the chaos of packing up to go away and, worse, from removing the shade from the lamp. Never, never take the shade off a lamp. A lampshade is something sacred. Scuttle away like a rat from danger and into the unknown. Read or doze beside your lampshade; let the storm howl outside and wait until they come for you.

— Mikhail Bulgakov

He’s clever,” thought Ivan. “You have to admit, there are some smart people even among the intelligentsia. No denying that!

— Mikhail Bulgakov

But I judge by the eyes – you can’t mistake them either near or far! Oh, eyes are a significant thing! Like a barometer. You can see everything – who has a vast desert in his heart, who can jab you in the ribs with the toe of his boot for no reason at all, and who is afraid of everything.

— Mikhail Bulgakov

It is interesting to note that Margarita’s soul was in perfect shape.

— Mikhail Bulgakov

Oh, thrice romantic Master, don’t you want to stroll with your beloved by day under the cherries bursting into bloom, and int he evenings listen to Schubert’s music? Won’t it be pleasant for you to write with a quill by candlelight? Don’t you want to sit, like Faust, over a retort, hoping to create a new homunculus?

— Mikhail Bulgakov

L’amour surgit devant nous comme surgit de terre l’assassin au coin d’une ruelle obscure, et nous frappa tous deux d’un coup. Ainsi frappe la foudre, ainsi frappe le poignard !

— Mikhail Bulgakov

El hombre es mortal, y, como acertadamente se dijo, es mortal de repente.

— Mikhail Bulgakov

Make the wall 2.

— Mikhail Bulgakov

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

I can’t escape from here. Not because it’s too high but because I’ve nowhere to go.

— Mikhail Bulgakov

No, you mustn’t give way. It’s simply that you don’t know what the theater’s like. There are some complicated mechanisms in this world but the theater is the most complicated of them all...

— Mikhail Bulgakov

The evil is in humans, the Devil is not to blame.

— Mikhail Bulgakov

So what if I had to eat out of dustbins? At least it was an honest living.

— Mikhail Bulgakov

No. Never, not even when falling asleep, will I ever proudly mutter about nothing being able to surprise me. No. As one year has passed, so will another, and it will be just as rich in surprises as the first one... And so I have to go on dutifully learning.

— Mikhail Bulgakov

During abstinence, I’m frightened of rustling noises, people are hateful to me. I’m afraid of them. During the euphoria I love them all, but I prefer solitude.

— Mikhail Bulgakov

Why, when all’s said and done, do I have to think up a pretext for my every action? I mean, it really is torment, not a life!

— Mikhail Bulgakov
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