Everybody calls everybody a spy, secretly, in Russia, and everybody is under surveillance. You never feel safe.

I feel like a person living on the brink of a volcano crater.

I joined another circle and the leader gave us a little leaflet in very small print, asking us to read it carefully and then come prepared to ask questions. It was a technical Marxist subject and I did not understand it nor did I know what questions to ask.

But settled things were enemies to me and soon lost their newness and color. The unknown called.

I have loved and bitterness left me for that hour. But there are times when love itself is bitter.

Like all my family and class, I considered it a sign of weakness to show affection; to have been caught kissing my mother would have been a disgrace, and to have shown affection for my father would have been a disaster.

There are many men - such as those often to be found among the Indians - who are refined until they have qualities often attributed to the female sex. Yet they are men, and strong ones.