That's metaphysics, my dear fellow. It's forbidden me by my doctor, my stomach won't take it.
Boris PasternakAbout dreams. It is usually taken for granted that you dream of something that has made a particularly strong impression on you during the day, but it seems to me itยดs just the contrary. Often itยดs something you paid no attention to at the time -- a vague thought that you didnยดt bother to think out to the end, words spoken without feeling and which passed unnoticed -- these are the things that return at night, clothed in flesh and blood, and they become the subjects of dreams, as if to make up for having been ignored during waking hours.
Boris PasternakI don't like purely philosophical works. I think a little philosophy should be added to life and art by way of seasoning, but to make it one's specialty seems to me as strange as eating nothing but horseradish." - Lara, from Doctor Zhivago
Boris PasternakAs before the collapse, the setting sun brushed the tiles, brought out the warm brown glow on the wallpaper, and hung the shadow of the birch on the wall as if it were a woman's scarf.
Boris PasternakI don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.
Boris PasternakThe great majority of us are required to live a constant, systematic duplicity. Your health is bound to be affected by it if, day after day, you say the opposite of what you feel, you grovel before what you dislike and rejoice at what bring brings you nothing but misfortune. Our nervous system isnโt just a fiction, itโs part of our physical body, and our soul exists in space and is inside us, like teeth in our mouth. It canโt be forever violated with impunity.
Boris Pasternak