This was a trip. It was weird. It was fun. I don’t know that I would say it was a particularly enjoyable read. It didn’t seem to flow. It reminded me a bit of Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow. That doesn’t mean that it wasn’t good. Not enjoyable doesn’t mean “bad”. It was a completely different fun experience. It stretched the imagination a bit.

p8 - “No, we don’t believe in God … The majority of the population consciously and long ago ceased believing in the fairy tales about God. … what, then, about the proofs of God’s existence, of which known, there are exactly five? … if there is no God, then, one may ask, who governs human life and, in general, the whole order of things on earth? Man governs himself … how can man govern, if he is not only deprived of the opportunity of making a plan for at least some ridiculously short period — well, say, a thousand years — but cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow?”

p12 - “Have you ever happened, citizen, to be in a hospital for the mentally ill? … he’s no foreign tourist, he’s a spy. … The devil, he heard everything”

p14 - “I am a specialist in black magic … I am the only specialist in the world … Bear in mind that Jesus did exist.”

p20 - “What is truth?”

p22 - “So you maintain that you did not incite anyone to destroy … or set fire to, or in any other way demolish the temple?”

p23 - “why is it that you use the words, ‘good people’ all the time? Do you call everyone that, or what? ‘Everyone,’ the prisoner replied. ‘There are no evil people in the world.’”

p26 - “asked me to give my view of state power. … I said that all power is violence over people, and that a time will come when there will be no power of the Caesars, nor any other power. Man will pass into the kingdom of truth and justice, where generally there will be no need for any power at all.”

p30 - Yeshua Ha-Nozri (Jesus) is sentence to death. The power of his preaching is recognized.

p40 - “nothing of what is written in the Gospels ever actually took place … I was personally present at it all. I was at Pontius Pilate’s balcony”

p43 - “It was the severed head of Berlioz.”

p56 - “something like rebellion was brewing.”

p69 - “Schizophrenia, I suppose … But what’s all this talk of his about some consultant?”

p70 - “The thought that there is no greater misfortune in the world than the loss of reason?”

p75 - between two worlds?

p87 - “one word made him jump; it was the word, ‘schizophrenia’ … I’ve been got up as a madman, and nobody wants to listen to me! … Very well, sir, I’ll check you out of here right now, if you tell me you’re normal. Not prove, but merely tell. So, then, are you normal? … I am normal. … You wish to leave here? Very well, sir. But allow me to ask, wehre are you going to go? To the police, of course”

p121 - makes me think of Cat in the Hat"

p122 - “you and I have just beheld a case of so-called mass hypnosis.”

p124 - “Mankind loves money … master of ceremonies”

p130 - “I cannot escape from here, not because it’s high up, but because I have nowhere to escape to.”

p133 - “Yesterday at Patriarch’s Ponds you met Satan. … That can’t be! He doesn’t exist! Good heavens! Anyone else might say that, but not you. You were apparently one of his first victims. You’re sitting, as you yourself understand, in a psychiatric clinic, yet you keep saying he doesn’t exist. Really, it’s strange!”

p135 - “You’re a writer? … I am a master” The author is the master. But there is fear to say what you truly believe as an author. The Master burns his novel. “She begged me not to be afraid of anything. … I struggled with myself like a madman. I had strength enough to get to the stove and start a fire with in it. … fear possessed every cell of my body … Poor woman … However, I have hopes that she has forgotten me… But you may recover … I am incurable”

p175 - Matthew to kill Yeshua to save him from suffering on the cross in the heat. “Yeshua was more fortunate than the other two. In the very first hour, he began to have blackouts, and then he fell into oblivion, hanging his head in its unwound turban. The flies and horseflies therefore covered him completely, so that his face disappeared under the black swarming mass. In his groin, and on his belly, and in his armpits, fat horseflies sat sucking at his yellow naked body.”

p180 - Matthew removes Yeshua from the cross

p189 - “we have a case of some sort of mass hypnosis”

p193 - Berloiz predicts his own death

p216 - “Never, since the age of nineteen, when she had marries and wound up in this house, has she known any happiness. Gods, my gods! What, then, did this woman need?!” Margarita dreams of the Master. “This dream means only one of two things … If he’s dead and beckoned to me, it means he has come for me, and I will die soon. And that’s very good — because then my suffering will soon end. Or else he’s alive”

p221 - story about the imprisonment of lust

p222 - “I’d pawn my soul to the devil just to find out whether he’s alive or not"o

p234 - Margarita becomes a beautiful naked witch from Azazello’s cream

p242 - Naked witch (Margarita) flying on a hog (Nikolai).

p249 - Beloiz’s apartment was a gateway / stairway to the heavens

p252 - Margarita (must be a woman named as such) asked to be the hostess of a party of powerful men. “We will see persons the scope of whose power in their own time was extremely great. … Margarita pampered. Odd though. Are they sacrificing her? “But where are the guests? Margarita asked Koroviev”

p269 - A ball of women who committed crimes against men because they were hostages

p270 - Bad people ball. Hell? She went to hell when leaving her husband?

p273 - “on this platter Margarita saw a man’s severed head. … The head was cut off by a woman

p274 - Margarita’s a spy and this is the devil warning her that she’s about to be caught. Drink his blood. “The crowsds of guests began to lose their shape: tailcoaters and women fell to dust.”

p282 - Powerful people will give you anything to use you as their puppet. Refuse. She’s granted one wish and she’s using it too morally. Try again. “I want my beloved master to be returned to me right now”

p286 - Margarita was willing to be naked in front of the devil in order to free the master from mentall illness

p286 - “why does Margarita call you a master? asked Woland. … She has too high an opinion of a novel I wrote. What is the novel about? It is a novel about Pontius Pilate.”

p288 - illegal literature

p300 - heaven and hell collide. God rescuing the sentenced

p305 - “among human vices he considered cowardice one of the first.”

p329 - “greater vice… cowardice…”

p354 - “Dostoyevsky is immortal … A writer is defined not by any identity card, but by what he writes. How do you know what plots are swarming in my head?”

p360 - “what would you do if evil did not exist, and what would earth look like if shadows disappeared from it? Shadows are cast by objects and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. Trees and living beings also have shadows. Do you want to skin the whole earth, tearing all the trees and living things off it, because of your fantasy of enjoying bare light? You’re stupid.”

  • I don’t fully understand this analogy.

p360 - “I’m not a slave … I’m his disciple.”

p364 - “those idols, ah, the golden idols! … are you seriously convinced that we were at Satan’s yesterday?”

p367 - “victims of our mental illness”

p370 - Margarita poisons herself and the master returns to the other world. … were you really alive before?

p379 - “How mysterious the mist over the swamps! He who has wandered in these mists, he who has suffered much before death, he who has flown over this earth bearing on himself too heavy a burden, knows it. The weary man knows it. And without regret he leaves the mists of the earth, its swamps and rivers, with a light heart he gives himself into the hands of death, knowing that she alone can bring him peace.”

  • Peace of death. Death brings long-awaited peace.

p381 - some beautiful imagry. “Your novel has been read … turning to the master … unfortunately, it is not finished … cowardice is the most grevious vice, then the dog at least is not guilty of it. Storms were the only thing the brave dog feared.”

p381 - “He says one and the same thing, … He says that even the moon gives him no peace … when he sleeps, he dreams one and the same thing: there is a path of moonlight, and he wants to walk down it and talk with the prisoner Ha-Nozri, because … of all things in the world, he most hates his immortality. … Twelve thousand moons for one moon long ago. … Well, now you can finish your novel with one phrase! … You’re free! You’re free! He’s waiting for you!”

p383 - just live; be human. There’s a peaceful and calm end to what was a chaotic story. “listen and enjoy what you were not given in life — peace. … your eternal home … you will be visited by those you love”

p384 - was willing to go to hell to end one’s life of misery, to achieve peace in death, but ends up in heaven. “he himself had just set free the hero he had created.”