Russian Culture Quotes

After my arrival in Russia, I saw that there is a large community of boxers. I also felt appreciated in Russia. Maybe even a lot more than I was valued and appreciated in my own country.

When I went to Moscow, I felt I was relearning Swan Lake - which was written for the Bolshoi - and being immersed in a tradition and history I had never experienced. It took a while to adjust to living there and learning the language, but now I have lots of friends. I get the best of two completely different worlds.

There are few words in Russian for the Western concept of 'law,' but there are legions of words for connections, helping people from one's neck of the woods.

The biggest nationalist in Russia: that's me.

Justice is the well water of the city of Novgorod, black and sweet.

I first read War And Peace about 100 years after Tolstoy wrote it.

I once did a film in Russia because I wanted to see what the hell was going on there.

My father was a teacher of the Russian language and literature in high school.

In Russian, ambition is a bad word. It's arrogant.

It's not considered polite in Russia to count the money in someone else's pocket.

Russia itself is a European country, and not just because our major political and economic centres are in Europe, but because Russian culture is primarily European culture.

The Russian people get so insanely close to each other as friends. Their lives are interrelated so much on an everyday basis.

Russia is an ancient country with historical, profound traditions and a very powerful moral foundation. And this foundation is a love for the Motherland and patriotism. Patriotism in the best sense of that word. Incidentally, I think that to a certain extent, to a significant extent, this is also attributable to the American people.

When I visited Moscow for the first time in 1998, I wandered into the historic Metropol Hotel as a curious tourist simply to ogle the giant painted glass ceiling that hangs over the grand restaurant off the lobby. It was the memory of that short visit that prompted me, some years later, to set 'A Gentleman in Moscow' in the hotel.

There is a view of Russian exceptionalism, that they are a unique civilisation, a view right since Ivan the Terrible that Russia is a special civilisation with a special culture. Putin is pushing that now.

It is easier for a Russian to become an atheist than for anyone else in the world.

Russians, in the knowledge of inexhaustible supplies of manpower, are accustomed to accepting gigantic fatalities with comparative calm.

I grew up in Russia. I grew up in Latvia, to be exact.

Come to find out, the Russians were never afraid of the Americans. They weren't raised with the terror that we were by our government. I was struck by how our government misled us for so many years.

Whenever you are unhappy ... go to Russia. Anyone who has come to understand that country well will find himself content to live nowhere else.

Trotsky was essentially a Western mind. Lenin was a Russian, and unlike most other revolutionary exiles, wherever he went he was a Russian.

The music we're playing now is based on my heritage, which is Russian, Romanian and Hungarian.

Russian women are now interested in clothes. But they will never attach supreme importance to fashions as do Europeans and American women, because they are too vitally interested in all the various projects going on in their country.

Russia is tough. The history, the land, the people - brutal.

Only in the Fall of 1924 did [Joseph] Stalin discover that it is especially Russia, as distinguished from other countries, which can by its own forces build up a socialist society.