If I stop, I shall sink and die. That's the way I'm made. I have to keep going always, and even when I get where I'm going, I'll have to keep on. That's living.

You are going to break your promise. I understand. And I hold my hands over the ears of my heart, so that I will not hate you.

I savor bitterness - it is born of experience. It is the privilege of one who has truly lived.

When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier.

Marriage is a wrestling match where you hold on tight while your mate changes into a hundred different things. The trick is that you're changing into a hundred other things, but you can't let go. You can only try to match up and never turn into a wolf while he's a rabbit, or a mouse while he's still busy being an owl, a brawny black bull while he's a little blue crab scuttling for shelter. It's harder than it sounds.

Why should he be spared?' 'Someone ought to be.' And it will not be me. I have survived, but I have not been spared.

And as we watched, the Tsar of Death lifted up his eyelids like skirts and began to dance in the streets of Leningrad.