“getting lost is not always a bad thing”

“There are no big stories left, just paths through the clutter and the inevitable soft landing.”

“At the end of the month, the doors will close on our little club for the last time. The end of an error.”

“Everything on earth -- both the good things and the bad things -- is not given to a man according to his just deserts, but as a result of certain as yet unknown, yet logical, laws which I won't even undertake to suggest to you, although it sometimes seems to me that I feel them as through a glass darkly.”

“Retirement is the state of being able to afford to do things that you have always wanted to do but are now too old to even think about doing.”

“There was nothing ugly in the small, unprepossessing figure of this emancipated woman, but the expression on her face made a bad impression on the viewer. One felt inclined to ask: "What's the matter? Are you hungry? Bored? Afraid? Why so tense?" Just like Sitnikov, she was always anxious. She spoke and moved in a rather casual, though awkward,manner: she obviously considered herself a good-natured, simple creature; at the same time, no matter what she did, it always seemed that she didn't want to be doing that. Everything she did appeared to be done on purpose, as children say, that is, neither simply nor naturally.”

“But I had absolutely lost all sense of personal dignity, and could not tear myself away from the spectacle of my own misery.”