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.

I have so little mastered the art of tranquil living that wherever I go I trail storm clouds of drama around me.

A little instruction in the elements of chartography—a little practice in the use of the compass and the spirit level, a topographical map of the town common, an excursion with a road map—would have given me a fat round earth in place of my paper ghost.

The first meal was an object lesson of much variety. My father produced several kinds of food, ready to eat, without any cooking, from little tin cans that had printing all over them.

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.

What we get in steerage is not the refuse, but the sinew and bone of all the nations.