The orange sky is rolling across the sky like a severed head, gentle light glimmers in the ravines among the clouds, the banners of the sunset are fl…

- Isaac Babel

Even at the time—twenty years old—I said to myself: better to go hungry, to go to prison, to be a tramp, than to sit at an office desk ten hours a da…

- Isaac Babel

She would lift her peignoir above her knees and say to her husband: 'Give baby a kiss...'

- Isaac Babel

A well-thought-out story doesn’t need to resemble real life. Life itself tries with all its might to resemble a well-crafted story.

- Isaac Babel

No iron spike can pierce a human heart as icily as a period in the right place.

- Isaac Babel

For me the whole world is like a gigantic theater in which I am the only spectator without opera glasses. The orchestra plays the prelude to the thir…

- Isaac Babel

A phrase is born into the world both good and bad at the same time. The secret lies in a slight, an almost invisible twist. The lever should rest in …

- Isaac Babel

When a phrase is born, it is both good and bad at the same time. The secret of its success rests in a crux that is barely discernible. One's fingerti…

- Isaac Babel

If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy.

- Isaac Babel