... he is rewarded with a form of eternal childhood, with the bounty and vigilance of the stars, the whole world was his inheritance and he shared it with everyone.

I seem to myself, as in a dream, Am accidental guest in this dreadful body.

During the terrible years of the Yekhov terror I spent seventeen months in the prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’ me. Then a woman with lips blue with cold who was standing behind me, and of course had never heard of my name, came out of the numbness which affected us all and whispered in my ear—(we all spoke in whispers there): ‘Could you describe this?’ I said, ‘I can!’ Then something resembling a smile slipped over what had once been her face.

The secret of secrets is inside me again.

... he is rewarded with a form of eternal childhood, with the bounty and vigilance of the stars, the whole world was his inheritance and he shared it with everyone.

It is unbearably painful for the soul to love silently.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem too insignificant for our concern? Yet in my heart I never will deny her, Who suffered death because she chose to turn.