People From Moscow

"My coaches and teammates really trusted me and gave me a chance to improve. They would come to me after a game I didn't score and say, 'Hey, don't worry about it. Next game you'll score.' The guys were great. It's an unbelievable team. It feels like home for me."

"My goal is the same, work like last year, play hard all the time. Try and score goals."

"You can't just stand and say to yourself, 'OK, right now I'm the best. That's it. No more working.' If you're a good player you have to be working harder and harder. This is not just my goal, it's my team goal. We can improve more and we can probably be even better than last year. My dream is to be the best."

"My dream has come true. I play with the great players and on a great team. I'm smiling and happy and enjoying the time of my life."

"I don't think about (being) the face of the NHL - I just enjoy my time right now. Playing in the NHL was my dream come true and I'm playing with great players. I feel trust and I'm happy because I'm having the time of my life."

"I always look forward to playing in Toronto because it's such a historic city when it comes to hockey."

"I don't care what people say about me and what they think about me. I care about my team and I care about myself. Lots of people watch hockey, and I think everybody has different thinking."

"We're young and we just have fun and right now we're here in the all-star game and it's unbelievable."

"I don't want to play for a no-good team. I want to win. I want to be on a good team like we see right now. We have great young guys. We have great experienced guys. Everything goes up."

"I'm ready. They hit me hard. I hit them hard. Doesn't matter who hits. What matters is results."

"All friends and relatives supported me. I do not know what to say. This is the victory for all Russians, for the whole country. We won the gold medal we were dreaming about. We deserved it."

"It was a good year. When I win the Stanley Cup, I'll say it's my best year."

"I want to win, I want to win everything. If I have a chance to win, why not?"

"We never give up, we believe in each other, we believe in the coach, we believe in everybody. Only when you believe do you win the Stanley Cup."

"I do support direct action. I do not advocate or support violence.… Elections are not a viable means of ensuring democratic change in Russia. Therefore I do support using other methods to push for a change back towards democracy"

"There is nothing I want more than to return to Russia."

"I repent and ask for forgiveness for greed. I longed for riches, not thinking that this is to the detriment of others. Covering my sins with the words "historic moment," "brilliant combinations" and "tremendous opportunities," I forgot about my fellow citizens.… I repent and ask for forgiveness for trampling free speech. Justifying myself with the desire to save Russia from the red-brown plague, I defined the policy of the country's chief information mouthpiece, neglecting democratic values.… I repent and ask for forgiveness for bringing Vladimir Putin to power. I should have seen, but could not see in him the future of a greedy tyrant and usurper, a man who trampled freedom and stopped the development of Russia. Many of us did not recognize it then, but that does not excuse me. I'm sorry."

"If we had not just 10 oligarchs, but more like 1,000, all of Russia's problems would be solved."

"Только полный идиот может думать, что крупный канал готов работать ради информирования зрителя. Канал продает продукт, его надо паковать. CNN, к примеру, является на Западе колоссальным идеологическим инструментом. Яркий пример тому - ситуация вокруг Югославии. Как эффектно промыли мозги очень цивилизованной части человечества! Вопрос в методах. Если потребитель "хавает" черствый хлеб, никто не будет давать ему булочки с маком. Я человек ангажированный абсолютно. Самим собой. У меня есть конкретные политические взгляды. Я не журналист. Я занимаюсь политической пропагандой. Я комментатор, и если человек комментирует события, не имея своей позиции, то это явление болезненное."

"Сволочи нью-йоркские. Слушай, я был диссидентом, профилактированным КГБ, в отличие от очень многих нынешних борцов за демократию. Я никогда, у меня в принципе, в программе, в голове не сидело, что я могу из этой страны уехать. Это моя страна. Моя!"

"re gmail, great user experience has helped other email systems (others have increased storage etc). there are areas that have been overlooked in industry, much as search was overlooked in the 90's. thinks they have technology, distribution infrastructure to address those things."

"Sergey’s the Google playboy. He was known for getting his fingers caught in the cookie jar with employees that worked for the company in the masseuse room. He got around."

"If what you’re doing is not seen by some people as science fiction, it’s probably not transformative enough."

"Having come from a totalitarian country, the Soviet Union, and having seen the hardships that my family endured–both while there and trying to leave—I certainly am particularly sensitive to the stifling of individual liberties."

"... whenever I have met with our elected officials they are invariably thoughtful, well-meaning people. And yet collectively 90% of their effort seems to be focused on how to stick it to the other party."

"Technology is an inherent democratizer. Because of the evolution of hardware and software, you’re able to scale up almost anything. It means that in our lifetime everyone may have tools of equal power."

"We came up with the notion that not all web pages are created equal. People are – but not web pages."

"When it’s too easy to get money, then you get a lot of noise mixed in with the real innovation and entrepreneurship. Tough times bring out the best parts of Silicon Valley."

"I thought that the painter had no right to paint so unclearly.. ..(but) the first faint doubt as to the importance of an 'object' as the necessary element in painting."

"..we parted in 1914, when Kandinsky, being an enemy alien [because of his Russian nationality and living in Germany], had to flee from Germany to Switzerland, as did Jawlensky and Marianne von Werefkin too [to neutral Switzerland]. ..Ever since we parted in 1914, I have worked mainly by myself. After the First World War, here in Munich, we found that our Blue Rider group had broken up. Franz Marc and Macke had both been killed [in World War 1.] Kandinsky, Jawlensky and Marianne were no longer here [in or around Munich].."

"In 1908.. .I worked more and more on my own. When Kandinsky became increasingly interested in abstract art, I also tried my hand, of course, at a few improvisations of the same general nature as his. But I believe I had developed a figurative style of my own, or at least one that suited my temperament."

"My main difficulty was that I could not paint fast enough. . .When I begin to paint, it's like leaping suddenly into deep waters, and I never know beforehand whether I will be able to swim. Well, it was Kandinsky who taught me the technique of 'swimming'. I mean that he taught me to work fast enough, and with enough self-assurance, to be able to achieve this kind of rapid and spontaneous recording of moments of life."

"..I had always been mainly a plain-air painter.. .At first I experienced great difficulty with my brushwork – I mean with that the French call 'la touche de pinceau'. So Kandinsky taught me how to achieve the effects that I wanted with a palette knife. In the view from my window in Sèvres, that I painted in 1906, when we were together in France, you can see how well he taught me. Later of course, here in Murnau, I learned to handle brushes, too, but I managed this by following Kandinsky's example, first with a palette knife, than with brushes."

"Well, when we [Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter ] first met, Munich was still very much a center of plain-air painting [painting in open air], and Kandinsky himself was a plain-air painter too, to some extent. We used to go out sketching and painting together in the countryside [around Murnau], and he painted a picture of me sketching, and I also did one of him [on board in oil]. That was a long time ago in 1903. It was only some ten years later, when he painted his first 'Improvisations' that he began to work exclusively in his studio."

"I don't think that Kandinsky was ever really a communist. He just happened to be in Russia [Kandinsky went to Russia in 1914, because of the outbreak of the First World War, ànd his Russsian nationality] and to become involved in some revolutionary artistic activities because of his reputation as a revolutionary in the arts. In any case, he left Russia as soon as an opportunity arose. But we had parted, by that time, and I prefer not to express any opinion on Kandinsky's later ideas and beliefs, with which I was never familiar."

"Whenever Kubín came to Munich from his nearby country retreat, they [Kandinsky and Kubin] spent many hours together, and I wish I had been able to take down in shorthand some of their conversations. Their ideas about art and life were so different.. .Kandinsky was an optimist; he had been interested, at first, in fairy tales and legends and chivalrous themes of the past, but he then became increasingly interested, after 1908, in formulating what he called the art of the future rather than indulging in romantic visions of the past. Kubin, on the other hand was a pessimist, always haunted by the past and suspicious of the future. This basic difference in their temperaments made their discussions all the more fruitful, and their friendship was the more intense."

"I have now forgotten who was responsible for the original idea (the publication of the Almanac 'Der Blaue Reiter', perhaps because I have never been particularly interested in theory.. .The Neue Künstlerverein [in Münich] didn't approve of Kandinsky's ideas in 1911 and rejected his 'Composition No. 5.' as too big for their show. So Kandinsky withdrew from the association, and Franz Marc, Kubín, Le Fauconnier and I followed this lead. It was then that Kandinsky began to write the book that became 'Der Blaue Reiter'."

"As far as I am concerned, I learned this technique [the use of flat areas, painted in bright color - sometimes in contrasting juxtaposition, sometimes like pieces of colored glass in heavy dark outlines] from Kandinsky and, at the same time, from the glass paintings of the Bavarian peasants of the Murneau area, who had painted for centuries in this style."

"They [Kandinsky, Jawlensky and Paul Klee ] were constantly arguing about art and each of them, at first, had his own ideas and his own style. Jawlensky was far less intellectual than Kandinsky or Klee and was often frankly puzzled by their theories."

"He [Kandinsky] had always expressed a great interest in abstraction when we visited Tunisia together in 1904. The Moslem interdiction of representational painting seemed to stir his imagination and that was when I first heard him say that objects disturbed him. Between 1907 and 1910 [the period in which Kandinsky painted his first abstract compositions], he began to rely increasingly on his own theories of art, which many of his friends could understand only with great difficulty."

"As a student of Franz von Stück he Kandinsky still continued for a while to paint quite naturalistically. He admitted to me that he had always loved color, even as a child, far more than subject matter. Form and color were his main interests. To me he often remarked that 'objects disturb me'. But he could paint portraits, too."

"I met him Kandinsky shortly after my return to Germany from the United States. A year later, in 1901, I decided to move to Munich, but still found very little encouragement as an artist. German painters refused to believe that a woman could have real talent, and I was even denied access, as a student, to the Munich Academy. It is significant that the first Munich artist who took the trouble to encourage me was Kandinsky, himself no German but a recent arrival from Russia."

"We [Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter] came here [in Murnau, near Munich] together, on a brief visit, for the first time in 1908, in June, and we were both delighted with the town and its surroundings. In August, we then returned to Murnau for two months, with Jawlensky and Marianne Werefkin.. ..Kandinsky fell in love with it [the house in Murnau where Gabriele would live till 1962] and said: 'You must buy it for our old age'. So I bought it and we then made it our home until he returned to Russia in 1914. Jawlensky and Marianne [Werefkin] used to stay with us here, and the people of Murnau called it: 'The House of the Russians'"

"It was this apparent paradox, by which the so-called Abstract Expressionists.. ..are really far more sympathetic to wards Mondrian than towards Kandinsky. The Mondrian thing seems paradoxical only in relation to the Mondrian that people interpreted in the [nineteen-]thirties as a rather cold and static artist. Maybe it is only more recently that we have realized about the blinking that takes place at the intersection of the lines, of shuttling back and forth and so on, that Mondrian becomes in some ways a more dynamic artist than Kandinsky."

"The students' relationship to Kandinsky was very respectful [at the Bauhaus.. .What he said was always insightful and more or less documented. In the case of Paul Klee, in contrast, everything was always up in the air. You could make what you wanted of it."

"I have just read your book ['On the Spiritual in Art'] from cover to cover, and I will read it once more. I find it pleasing to an extraordinary degree, because we agree on nearly all of the main issues.."

"Kandinsky's teaching: scientifically rigorous examination of colour and form. Example: seek the corresponding elementary colour for the three forms (triangle, square and circle). It was decided that they are yellow for the triangle, blue for the circle and red for the square; so to say, once and for all."

"..[quote of Newman, on making his work 'Onement', in 1948]..from then on I had to give up any relation to nature.. .That doesn't mean that I think my things are mathematical or removed from life. By 'nature' I mean something very specific. I think that some abstractions - for example Kandinsky's - are really nature paintings. The triangles and the spheres or circles could be bottles. They could be trees, or buildings. I think that in 'Euclydean Abyss' and 'Onement' I removed myself from nature. But I did not remove myself from life."

"Our sketchbooks and studies – as well as the paintings and photos, convey the detail of our Tunisian impressions [in 1904]. At times we got along well – at times not at all – we took walks in the city and also in the Belvedere park – it was never boring with my beloved, but we didn’t made contact with any other people; he never wanted it."

"Can you imagine a music in which tonality (that is, the adherence to any key) is completely suspended? I was constantly reminded of Kandinsky's large composition which also permits no trace of tonality.. ..and also of Kandinsky's 'jumping spots' in hearing this music [of Schönberg ], which allows each tone sounded to stand on its own (a kind of white canvas between the spots of color). Schönberg proceeds from the principle that the concepts of consonance and dissonance do not exist at all. A so-called dissonance is only a mere remote consonance – an idea which now occupies me constantly while painting.."