I hate vodka. It is the second worst thing to have come out of Russia, after communism - which isn't Russian anyway, Karl Marx was Russian.
I can say without affectation that I belong to the Russian convict world no less than I do to Russian literature. I got my education there, and it will last forever.
Russians aren't perfect. Their politics are messed up, and they keep going through self-defeating economic cycles. But I have a lot of respect for Russia, and a lot of love for Russians.
Russia's biggest problem is organized crime and its leaders are influenced by the Russian mafia. But it's not right to call it a Russian mafia, it's a Jewish mafia.
To say that you now trust the Russian military command and control system because some Russian general told you from the bottom of his heart that's the case, strikes me as most unrealistic.
Jonathan: I'm distressed by dogs. Alex: [in Russian to Grandfather] He is afraid of dogs. Grandfather: [in Russian to Alex] Bullshit. No one is afraid of dogs.
Lieutenant Melekhin, Engineer - Red October: [in Russian to shipmates after Ryan chokes on a Russian cigarette] He's turning green.
She'd been trained as a child no to trust anyone, but he'd just saved her life, and she was freezing. He could be a yeti for all she cared.
Germany, because of the fact and the perception of a special relationship with Russia, is the only one who can influence Russian debate. Russians also believe that Germans understand them best because they've been through a big war and know what humi...
When I was at Cambridge in the early fifties, there was a school nearby for training Army officers in Russian, and some imaginative genius came up with the idea of putting on Russian plays with the students to improve their language skills.
Yes, I can speak a bit and I can read and write in Russian. I learned it from my grandmother who raised me with all the Russian fairytales.
I have Czech, I have Russian, I have English, I have Italian. Uh, what am I missing? A little bit of Irish. The Russian is Jewish. So I'm your classic American mutt.
Generally speaking, by the way, that is the moral of the opponents of violence in politics: they renounce violence when it comes to introducing changes in what already exists, but in defense of the existing order they will not stop at the most ruthle...
I can understand, he said, that many people, many perfectly ordinary people, have an interesting story to tell. No one's experience of life is valueless.
There can be such a sky, and such A play of rays, that our heart feels An insult to a doll is more Piteous than an insult to oneself. ("It Happened at Vallen-Koski")
I think I was more or less, convinced of that by just the press, the US press. By people who were pressuring you, saying that you gotta beat the Russian's, if you don't win anything else, win the Russian meet and so forth.
'Night Watch' itself is a very Russian movie. It's impossible to imagine this kind of movie somewhere else: a movie with a depressing ending, a lot of inexplicable storylines, strange characters. It's a Russian reflection of American film culture.
The history of Chechnya is one of imperialism gone terribly wrong. In the 13th and 14th centuries, Chechens were among the few peoples to fend off Mongol conquerors, but at a terrible cost. Turks, Persians, and Russians sought to seize Chechnya, and ...
The 1960s was a period when writers in the West began to be aware of the extraordinary eloquence and popular attraction of the Russian poets such as Yevtushenko and Voznesensky - oppositional figures who could draw crowds. The Russian poets recited f...
[about Silent Bob's Russian Cousin] Jay's Lady Friend: He only speaks Russian? Jay: Naw, he speaks some English, but he can't all speak it good like we do.
My father, a Russian translator, wanted to distinguish me by calling me Misha, the Russian diminutive of his name, Michael. My name and work as a writer specialising in the Balkans has created a myth that I have Slavic connections, but actually I am ...