“You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.”

“The universe said, “You’re almost there, just a few more steps.” I agreed and took those steps. However, my definition of the distance was measured in feet, while the universe meant miles.”

“I think that of all the principles for journalism, the most important is to complicate simple things and simplify complicated things. At first sight, you may think something is simple, but it may conceal a great deal. However, facing a very complex thing, you should find out its essence. -Jin Yongquan”

“I’ve yet to see any problem, however complicated, which when you looked at it the right way didn’t become still more complicated.”

“I’m sitting in the prow-shaped dining room of a tourist steamer, the Georgi Zhukov, on the Yenisei River, which flows from the foothills of Mongolia to the Arctic Ocean, thus cleaving the northern Eurasian plain – a distance of some two and a half thousand versts. Given Russian distances, and the general arduousness of Russian life, you’d expect a verst to be the equivalent of – I don’t know – thirty-nine miles. In fact it’s barely more than a kilometer.”

“I am really not tired, which I almost wonder at; for we must have walked at least a mile in this wood. Do not you think we have? ''Not half a mile,' was his sturdy answer; for he was not yet so much in love as to measure distance, or reckon time, with feminine lawlessness.”