“The day I die, it won’t be because gravity knocked me on my back so much as it will be that I could no longer stand up to life.”

“Love’s a knife with pain and ecstasy converging at the piercing tip.”

“One day or one night—between my days and nights, what difference can there be?—I dreamed that there was a grain of sand on the floor of my cell. Unconcerned, I went back to sleep; I dreamed that I woke up and there were two grains of sand. Again I slept; I dreamed that now there were three. Thus the grains of sand multiplied, little by little, until they filled the cell and I was dying beneath that hemisphere of sand. I realized that I was dreaming; with a vast effort I woke myself. But waking up was useless—I was suffocated by the countless sand. Someone said to me:You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of the grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.I felt lost. The sand crushed my mouth, but I cried out: I cannot be killed by sand that I dream —nor is there any such thing as a dream within a dream.— Jorge Luis Borges, The Writing of the God”

“[Lev Beniov:] "The imminence of death did not frighten me as much as it should have. I had been too afraid for too long; I was too exhausted, too hungry, too feel anything with proper intensity. But if my fear had diminished, it was not because my courage had increased. My body was so weak, so spent, that my legs trembled from the effort of standing upright. I could summon no great concern for anything, including the fate of Lev Beniov.”

“I'm in prison because I'm a free man, because I found it necessary to exercise my freedom, because I accepted this necessity.”

“If I could live again my life,In the next – I’ll try,- to make more mistakes,I won’t try to be so perfect,I’ll be more relaxed,I’ll be more full – than I am now,In fact, I’ll take fewer things seriously,I’ll be less hygienic,I’ll take more risks,I’ll take more trips,I’ll watch more sunsets,I’ll climb more mountains,I’ll swim more rivers,I’ll go to more places – I’ve never been,I’ll eat more ice creams and less lima beans,I’ll have more real problems – and less imaginary ones,I was one of those people who liveprudent and prolific lives -each minute of his life,Of course that I had moments of joy – but,if I could go back I’ll try to have only good moments,If you don’t know – that’s what life is made of,Don’t lose the now!I was one of those who never goes anywherewithout a thermometer,without a hot-water bottle,and without an umbrella and without a parachute,If I could live again – I will travel light,If I could live again – I’ll try to work bare feetat the beginning of spring till the end of autumn,I’ll ride more carts,I’ll watch more sunrises and play with more children,If I have the life to live – but now I am 85,- and I know that I am dying …”

“gravity, n. I imagine you saved my life. And then I wonder if I'm just imagining it.”