We were in a lounge with a locked door at one point. It wasn’t the Gulag.

To combat death you don’t need much of a life, just one that isn’t yet finished.

I’ll be your Dostoevsky, if you’ll be my Tolstoy. Our life together will be so full of despair that death will be like a gulag full of joy.

A Taste of the Gulag.”

My headboard has bars, like a jail cell. Sometimes I’ll be asleep and think I’m in prison, and I’ll hear my alarm clock go off and feel like I’m out on parole. Only then does...

The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. The wisdom of the novel comes from having a question for everything….The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the world as a question. There...

Sveta had much less to say, but she sat with Lev and held his hand, and when I asked her what had made her fall in love with him, she replied, ‘I knew he was...

If bones could freeze, then the brain could also be dulled and the soul could freeze over. And the soul shuddered and froze- perhaps to remain frozen forever.