The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy. (“Tomorrow”)

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

They say there is a kind of flower that blooms only once a century, Then couldn't there be one that flowers only once every thousand years - or once every ten thousand years? Maybe there are, and we just don't know it because today is itself that once-in-a-thousand-year moment.

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

Tipsy, they tumbled early into bed - to get as much sleep as they could. So they would feel less hunger. The summer catch had been poor; there wasn't much food. They ate with care and looked sideways at the old: the old were gluttons, everybody knew it, and what was the good of feeding them? It wouldn't harm them to starve a little. The hungry dogs howled. The women rinsed the children's bellies with hot water three times a day, so they wouldn't cry so much for food. The old starved silently. ("The North")

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

True literature can exist only where it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy functionaries, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels, and skeptics.

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

We have long become overgrown with calluses; we no longer hear people being killed. ("X")

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

We need writers who fear nothing. ("Our Goal")

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

What we need in literature today are vast philosophic horizons; we need the most ultimate, the most fearsome, the most fearless 'Why?' and 'What next?'("Literature, Revolution, and Entropy")

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

White-crested waves crash on the shore. The masts sway violently, every which way. In the gray sky the gulls are circling like white flakes. Rain squalls blow past like gray slanting sails, and blue gaps open in the sky. The air brightens. A cold silvery evening. The moon is overhead, and down below, in the water; and all around it-a wide frame of old, hammered, scaly silver. Etched on the silver-silent black fishing boats, tiny black needles of masts, little black men casting invisible lines into the silver. And the only sounds are the occasional plashing of an oar, the creaking of an oarlock, the springlike leap and flip-flop of a fish. ("The North")

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

You are afraid of it because it is stronger than you, you hate it because you are afraid of it you love it because you cannot subdue it to your will. Only the unsuitable can be loved.

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

You can only love something that refuses to be mastered.

— Yevgeny Zamyatin