“I know beginnings, I know endings too,and life-in-death, and something elseI'd rather not recall just now.”

“You do not know just what you've been forgiven.”

“And you know, I agree to everything:I will condemn, I will forget, I will give comfort to the enemy,Darkness will be light and sin lovely.”

“This land, although not my native land,Will be remembered forever.And the sea's lightly iced,Unsalty water.The sand on the bottom is whiter than chalk,The air is heady, like wine,And the rosy body of the pinesIs naked in the sunset hour.And the sunset itself on such waves of etherThat I just can't comprehendWhether it is the end of the day, the end of the world,Or the mystery of mysteries in me again.”

“I myself, from the very beginning,Seemed to myself like someone's dream or deliriumOr a reflection in someone else's mirror,Without flesh, without meaning, without a name.Already I knew the list of crimesThat I was destined to commit.”

“Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seemtoo insignificant for our concern?Yet in my heart I never will deny her,who suffered death because she chose to turn.- Lot's Wife”

“During the terrible years of the Yekhov terror I spent seventeen months in the prison queues in Leningrad. One day someone ‘identified’ me. Then a woman with lips blue with cold who was standing behind me, and of course had never heard of my name, came out of the numbness which affected us all and whispered in my ear—(we all spoke in whispers there): ‘Could you describe this?’I said, ‘I can!’Then something resembling a smile slipped over what had once been her face.”