Reshaping life! People who can say that have never understood a thing about lifeโthey have never felt its breath, its heartbeatโhowever much they have seen or done. They look on it as a lump of raw material that needs to be processed by them, to be ennobled by their touch. But life is never a material, a substance to be molded. If you want to know, life is the principle of self-renewal, it is constantly renewing and remaking and changing and transfiguring itself, it is infinitely beyond your or my obtuse theories about it.
Boris PasternakWhat for centuries raised man above the beast is not the cudgel but the irresistible power of unarmed truth.
Boris PasternakIf it's so painful to love and absorb electricity, how much more painful it is to be a woman, to be the electricity, to inspire love.
Boris PasternakWhat is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.
Boris PasternakA conscious attempt to fall asleep is sure to produce insomnia, to try to be conscious of one's own digestion is a sure way to upset the stomach. Consciousness is a poison when we apply it to ourselves. Consciousness is a light directed outward. it's like the headlights on a locomotiveโturn them inward and you'd have a crash.
Boris PasternakItยดs a good thing when a man is different from your image of him. Is shows he isnยดt a type. If he were, it would be the end of him as a man. But if you canยดt place him in a category, it means that at least a part of him is what a human being ought to be. He has risen above himself, he has a grain of immortality.
Boris Pasternak