“If these were indications of new love, as Sergei expected they were, then he was not surprised. All that scraping and arguing, the teasing and playful antagonism, could only mean on thing. It was a sure sign of attraction.”

“The radio station was playing Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, a sure sign that things were much worse than they appeared.”

“To be sure, there were still a lot of people against us, but the very intensity of the fight over the meaning of the heap of meaning could only indicate that the matter was of the greatest significance. And significance was the same as meaning, and the greatest significance was therefore the same as the greatest meaning.And I only doubted a tiny little bit.”

“The currents of modern civilization had somehow passed it by, and as he returned to it now, fresh from the sides of England and France, Sergei Semenov saw only familiar signs of backwardness and decay.”

“On the mainland he had always lived in the future, always looking forward to the completion of the project in hand. When he passed his exams, got the new contract, married Louise, paid off the mortgage: when, in turn, each of these dreams was realized, then, and only then, would he be happy. All were ends, to be reached by any means expedient or possible. He saw now that there were no such things as ends, only means: for ends were phantoms that melted away when approached, only to reform into other ends further off.”

“Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat's entrails with horsehair.”