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.

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

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.

It is only that my illusion is more real to me than reality. And so do we often build our world on an error, and cry out that the universe is falling to pieces, if any one but lift a finger to replace the error by truth.

You heard on all sides that the brightest Jewish children were turned down if the examining officers did not like the turn of their noses.

The czar always got his dues, no matter if it ruined a family.

The apex of my civic pride and personal contentment was reached on the bright September morning when I entered the public school.