And when the war broke out, its real horrors, its real dangers, its menace of real death were a blessing compared with the inhuman reign of the lie, and they brought relief because they broke the spell of the dead letter.
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 PasternakHe realised, more vividly than ever before, that art had two constant, two unending preoccupations: it is always meditating upon death and it is always thereby creating life.
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 PasternakReshaping 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 Pasternak