The Fixer Quotes

“In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.”

“It tasted bitter and he blamed existence.”

“He waits. (repeated throughout novel)”

“He could not foresee any future in the future.”

“There’s no bottom to my bitterness, he thought.”

“Nobody can burn an idea even if they burn the man.”

“Who were they punishing if his life was punishment?”

“The truth is I’m a half-ignorant man. The other half is half-educated.”

“Wikipedia: The Fixer”

“‘Who will help me?’ he cried out in his sleep, but the other prisoners had their own anguish, their own bad dreams.”

“Yakov Shepsovitch, what more can I tell you? Take heart in the truth and endure your trials. Sustain yourself in your innocence. (Bibikov)”

“Yakov wrung his hands. ‘If so what am I to do, your honour? Will I be abandoned to die in this prison?’
‘Who has abandoned you?’ the Investigating Magistrate asked, looking at him gently.”

“There's something cursed, it seems to me, about a country where men have owned men as property. The stink of that corruption never escapes the soul, and it is the stink of future evil. (Bibikov)”

“If only his innocence were written on a sheet of paper, he could pull it out and say, ‘Read, it’s all here,’ but since it was hidden in himself they would know it only if they sought it, and they were not seeking.”

“‘No one says it’s easy. Still, you are not alone.’ (Bibikov)
‘In my cell I’m alone. In my thoughts I’m alone. I don’t want to sound bitter to you because I’m thankful for your help – ’ (Yakov)”

“Jesus cried out help to God but God gave no help. There was a man crying out in anguish in the dark, but God was on the other side of his mountain. He heard but he had heard everything. What was there to hear that he hadn’t heard before?”

“‘Little brother,’ he said to Yakov, making the sign of the cross over him, ‘don’t lose hope. The stones of the bridge may crumble but the truth will come out.’
‘And till then,’ sighed the fixer, ‘what of my wasted youth?’”

“After he had finished reading the document the fixer, in exhaustion, thought, there’s no getting rid of the blood any more. It’s stained every word of the indictment and can’t be washed out. When they try me it will be for the crucifixion.”

“He tried desperately to put together a comprehensible sequence of events that had led inevitably from his departure from the shtetl to a prison cell in Kiev; but to think of all these strange and unexpected experiences as meaningfully caused by related events confused him.”

“You wait. You wait a minute of hope and days of hopelessness. Sometimes you just wait, there’s no greater insult. You sink into your thoughts and try to blot out the prison cell. If you’re lucky it dissolves and you spend a half hour out in the open, beyond the doors and walls and the hatred of yourself. If you’re not lucky your thoughts can poison you.”