“Scraps and shreds of thoughts were simply swarming in his brain, but he could not catch at one, he could not rest on one, in spite of all his efforts…”

“In spite of Stepan Arkadyevitch's efforts to be an attentive father and husband, he never could keep in his mind that he had a wife and children.”

“Then he made one last effort to search in his heart for the place where his affection had rotted away, and he could not find it.”

“Everything I could want in eternity is possible because of you," he thought, and then he stopped thinking and simply enjoyed being in the arms of the one person in all of forever who made his life complete.”

“Once in a while, though, he went on binges. He would sneak into bookstores or libraries, lurk around the racks where the little magazines were kept; sometimes he'd buy one. Dead poets were his business, living ones his vice. Much of the stuff he read was crap and he knew it; still, it gave him an odd lift. Then there would be the occasional real poem, and he would catch his breath. Nothing else could drop him through space like that, then catch him; nothing else could peel him open.”

“Any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain.”