Viktor Pinchuk Quotes

Once, when I was a teenager, with a backpack behind my shoulders, in shabby clothes and a hat with wide fields, went down from the highest, as it seemed to me, Crimean mountains, to where in the lowlands rural children grazed a flock of sheep. The shepherd boys surrounded me from all sides, mistaking for a wanderer and started asking... I told them about the world trip, African cannibals, described aborigines traditions and much more. The chappies listened as enchanted, opening their mouths from amazement: they have never been beyond the neighboring village. However, the fifteen-year-old narrator in those days was not yet a traveler, I deceived them... and I also deceived you: this story is fiction.

Waking up early in the morning, I was seriously scared, deciding that my company had gone to the military training — therefore, I will receive a scolding from the senior in rank for oversleeping. Crawled under the bed for footcloths and at that moment... remembered that I was not in the army now. No, this is not a barracks, but a room in a Georgian hotel, costing five euro’s per bed per day. Delighted with the return of his memory, crossed himself mentally and, having dressed, went out onto the balcony that adorned the facade of the building. (About the hotel at the bus station in Tbilisi)

On December 3, 2010, from the Nativity of Christ, with a small camping backpack behind my back, I left the house, running away from the routine of pale gray days, which look like twins in a morgue. In the backpack — a monthly supply of oatmeal, a metal bowl and a mug, in the passport — not a single visa, in the head — dreams, ideas and a vague future.

Death will come for me somewhere in the African jungle. I hope the negatives will be handed over to their homeland, and someone will make a posthumous exhibition. But another option is also possible: my photographic films will be hung on a palm tree by the native people, celebrating some local holiday, and they will smash coconuts with my camera.

Time moves inexorably forward and this process is irreversible. The list of countries that I managed to visit is increasing every year. There are still no sponsors and probably will not be. However, are they needed? Easily and just to do without someone's help: it is necessary only, without feeling sorry for itself, to disdain money a little, to slightly ignore comfort and a cosiness and to believe very much in the forces even if... they are not present.

The teacher asked wards what the meaning of life was. They began to put forward versions. Only the failing student, sitting at the last desk, was silent, staring stupidly down. When the noise subsided a little, the teacher turned to him: «What do you think about this?» — «I do not think about what is not...» — answered dunce.

Dedicated to eccentrics, madmen, residents of the Far North — heroes of Russian anecdotes, as well as to all those who died while climbing Mount Everest. (Dedication of the book)

A trip without a camera to the African tribes for me is the same as giving a person who has lost both legs the boots he once dreamed of.

During my childhood, the inscription «tourist» accompanied the picture, where a person in sneakers with a backpack climbs the mountains. Now under a similar comment — a beachgoers: sunglasses, a sun lounger under a palm tree near the azure waters of the ocean. Everything flows, everything changes.

I was about to go to bed when the commandant knocked on the door again. He brought a plastic bottle with a cut-off top, explaining by sign language that it was «parasha» (chamber pot — Aut.). Thanking the kind man, turned to the wall, trying to fall asleep. I almost succeeded: got to the waiting room of the land of dreams, when an armed convoy suddenly appeared. (About stay in the Kubul prison)

Native penates. Semi-annual trip behind. Woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat: it seemed as if there was money for the next travelling and the hour came. Mentally howled in horror: «Orderlies, give me an injection of selfishnessI, don't want, tired! » A moment later, returning from the ghostly drowse to dull reality, as if the ice swimmer from the «February heat» club, diving from an ice crust into a hole, remembered that there were no funds yet and, therefore, a trip was impossible. This is the joy of a soldier looking closely at a small hole from a bullet (a second ago whistled over the ear) in the wall of the trench: it means that there is still time and you can again go on the attack, fight with the remnants of philistine, selfishness and laziness, who, like a tiny pygmy, lodged inside me.

Warm autumn day. The last hours and minutes of the outgoing Indian summer. The weather is wonderful. The sun gives warmth to everyone. Children play at merchandisers. Smiles of good people from billboards attract to buy a cockroach remedy. Male pensioners in trolleybuses give his sits to female pensioners. Traffic cop gives out invitations to a concert of police ditties. Somewhere in the yellowed foliage, a stupid starling sings his trills. And yet something is missing. Missing her. Inconceivable, but there were times when I could somehow do without Africa.

Woke up in the morning. Outside the window is a dull landscape of a small city where people live like moles in burrows. An ordinary day, everything as always. But the ghost of doubt still loomed in consciousness, not wanting to disappear with the first cry of the roosters. For the sake of what I wandered and suffered for six months: starved in Papua New Guinea, slept on the sidewalk in the company of Indonesian homeless people, shaking from cold at night in China? After all, I will not be awarded a chocolate medal and a material allowance as for an international tramp will not be appointed. Who makes me do this? Maybe my own stupidity? But no, this is her sister — conscience. And I got back to work.

Money is a kind of paintings, they can be framed, hung on the wall, and this will also be an exhibition.

It is better to watch TV when it is switched off — that is, in the traditional way, but by pulling the plug out of the socket. One of the advantages of the alternative is electricity saving; in addition — the use of this method does not pose a threat to eyesight.