On a royal birthday every house must fly a flag, or the owner would be dragged to a police station and be fined twenty-five rubles.

A long past vividly remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you would run.

We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later; and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful. Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth.

On a royal birthday every house must fly a flag, or the owner would be dragged to a police station and be fined twenty-five rubles.

You went up to be examined with the other Jewish children, your heart heavy about that matter of your nose.

A proper autobiography is a death-bed confession.

It is not that I belong to the past, but the past that belongs to me.