Pushkin Press

If he seemed to come from a black-and-white photograph, she was from a hand-painted photo, distant and sad.

conversation in which everything appeared to be illuminated and stoked by fires only just under the surface occupied her mind, intriguing her already lively curiosity so much that she did not avoid another meeting at a public recital.

Her horror at her own wickedness, which alarmed her for the first few days, became a source of heightened pride. But these mysterious emotions too were felt at their full strength only at first. Beneath the surface, her instincts resisted this man, and most of all what was new in him, the difference that had in fact aroused her curiosity.

If this is agreed between us, then I feel at liberty to put forward a few ideas and suggestions because you will not allow them to fetter that independence which is the most important quality that a reader can possess.

The background had been made from an immense sheet of royal-blue cardboard sprinkled with perhaps two hundred stars cut out of silver and gold paper, and attached with glue.

And you’ll never know the law

that I, like so many, have learned—

and that has broken my heart:

Outside Limbo there is no Elysium.

For me his words were divorced from every earthly reason and value. I heard them as one hears a sacred liturgy, where the drama recited is no more than a symbol, and the ultimate truth it celebrates is bliss. This last, true meaning is a mystery that only the blessed know: pointless to seek an explanation by human means.

Like the mystics, I wanted not to receive explanations from him but to dedicate my faith to him.

He wishes he could anaesthetize himself and live without feeling anything.

See everything, understand and not talk. But the memories are there, they remain with him.

They’ve all naturalized cannibalism, he thinks. Cannibalism, another word that could cause him major problems.