“Overgrown, crumbling, tilted, full of cracks, returning to the soil. Paint fell from boards, plaster from walls. Unsupervised, matter was collapsing under its own weight.”

“I felt that the decrepit state of these once magnificent buildings, with their broken gutters, walls blackened by rainwater, crumbling plaster revealing the coarse masonry beneath it, windows boarded up or clad with corrugated iron, precisely reflected my own state of mind...”

“For the Romanov regime fell under the weight of its own internal contradictions. It was not overthrown.”

“In such a beast as this..." (he means the army)"...it was the collective power that went, collapsing like a long-exhausted animal, at once falling under its own weight as much as that of its enemy. It was a collective death and not a matter of bravery or even strength, and once it was down it was finished as a battle.”

“Oh, how the pillars of lust can crumble under the weight of stupidity.”

“Her warm memories. I'd like to paint them over the bare plaster walls of my soul, but everything I paint seems to peel.”