Yevgeny Zamyatin Quotes

It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes.

I write as if to save somebody’s life. Probably my own. Life is a kind of madness that death makes. Long live the dead because we live in them.

There are only three events in a man's life; birth, life, and death; he is not conscious of being born, he dies in pain, and he forgets to live.

For to err in opinion, though it be not the part of wise men, is at least human.

I think making mistakes is as inevitable as receiving disappointments.

Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.

To have someone who never makes a mistake, never finds her personal life in disarray, never worries about work-life balance? I think that would be unreal. What I'm writing is real.

Error is the stuff of which the web of life is woven, and he who lives longest and wisest is only able to weave out the more of it.

I'm not interested in showing the wish of what it looks like to be human. I'm interested in showing what it actually looks like.

Although I think I'm relatively happy as a person, I think there's something unhappy at the root of all my writing. I'd say optimistic but unhappy. Nothing that's particularly original, other than that we're going to live and die, and terrible things happen.

To be human is to err, isn't it?

The human condition is endlessly fascinating to me, and the existential horrors of life are what drive our imaginations and theater in general.

She is Living and I'm Dead, but I'd like to believe we're both human. Call me an idealist.

The true artform is being a human being.

I've been married 34 years. I have not been a perfect man. I have made mistakes in my life.

It's so much more interesting when you're human. I hate making mistakes, but I'm not afraid of 'em.

There are only two things to write about: life and death.

So next time someone complains that you have made a mistake, tell him that may be a good thing. Because without imperfection, neither you nor I would exist.

That is my principal objection to life, I think: It's too easy, when alive, to make perfectly horrible mistakes.

I love what I do, and I always make sure to tell my fans I'm not perfect, so don't think I am. I make mistakes. I'm human, and we all are. But I try to be the best I can be, and that's all I really can do.

It's human to make mistakes and some of us are more human than others.

We're all human at the end of the day, making mistakes. But learn from them is the key.

There is no poetry where there are no mistakes.

One of the things I've learned is there's no lesson to be learned. You have to resign yourself to the fact that mistakes are going to be made at any time in the creative process.

I love the process of cutting everything out with a scalpel yourself: I don't want to have my stencils drawn up in Illustrator, then laser-cut. I like the fact that it's slightly wrong; I think it gives it a beauty. The individual and handmade will always be worth more than what a computer can do, at least until computers can learn how to make mistakes.