Do you understand? I don't want you to do a thing if you don't understand it.

His last thought was that it hadn't been stupidity that had allowed his son to enchant him so easily with words. It had been love.

You won't even take your bow? Are you planning to throttle a moose with your bare hands, then?

Ivan had contrived somehow in the dark of night to replace every watermelon in the watermelon patch with a gravestone, and every gravestone in the engraver's lot with a watermelon

...when truths disappear, they leave behind blank spaces, and that is also dangerous.

Why does everybody throw every troublesome thing into the river?

It was just that she had the need to tell him something honest, something honest and unhappy, because cheerful lies tonight were too depressing and too sharp, turning in on her like pins