Sublime

He longed to shout to him and to the people in the railway coach that salvation lay not in loyalty to forms but in throwing them off.

He had the same aristocratic sense of equality with all living creatures and the same gift of taking in everything at a glance and of expressing his thoughts as they first came to him and before they had lost their meaning and vitality.

But he was too young to write such a book; instead, he wrote poetry. He was like a painter who was always making sketches for a big canvas he had in mind.

The town recluse whipping up his nerves and his imagination with strong black coffee and tobacco doesn't know the strongest drug of all-good health and real necessity.

Ever since his schooldays he had dreamed of composing a book about life which would contain, like buried explosives, the most striking things he had so far seen and thought about.

My whole being was astonished and asked: If it is so painful to love and to be charged with this electric current, how much more painful must it be to a woman and to be the current, and to inspire love.

"First signs of spring. Thaw. The air smells of buttered pancakes and vodka, as at Shrovetide. A sleepy, oily sun blinking in the forest, sleepy pines blinking their needles like eyelashes, oily puddles glistening at noon. The countryside yawns, stretches, turns over, and goes back to sleep.

They came out of the vault intoxicated not by the mere thought of food but by the realization that they too were of use in the world and did not live in vain and had deserved the praise and thanks that Tonia would shower on them at home.