“Besides, I can't, I no longer have the strength to destroy this painful piece of myself, which might turn out to be the piece I value most.”

“Do you believe that you will die? Yes, man is mortal, I am a man, ergo... No, that isn't what I mean. I know that you know that. What I'm asking is: Have you ever actually believed it, believe it completely, believe not with your mind but with your body, actually felt that one day the fingers now holding this very piece of paper will be yellow and icy...?”

“You know... or maybe you don't know... I don't know how to write this-but never mind: Now you know that there will never be a day for me, or a morning, or a springtime, without you. Because for me R is nothing more than... but you don't care about this. At any rate, I'm very grateful to him. I don't know what I would have done, alone, without him, these last few days. During these days and nights I've lived through ten or maybe twenty years. My room has seemed round and not square, and endless, round and round and all the same, with no doors anywhere. I can't live without you-because I love you. because I see. I understand, that you don't need anybody, anybody on earth, except her, that other one, and... look, that's just it, if I love you, then I have to...I just need two or three more days to try and put the pieces of myself back into some semblance of the former O-90-and then I'll go and fill our the form myself, that I'm withdrawing my registration for you, and you'll be better off, you'll be fine. I'll never come again. Goodbye.O.”

“She moved nearer, leaned her shoulder against me — and we were one, and something flowed from her into me, and I knew: this is how it must be. I knew it with every nerve, and every hair, every heartbeat, so sweet it verged on pain. And what joy to submit to this 'must'. A piece of iron must feel such joy as it submits to the precise, inevitable law that draws it to a magnet. Or a stone, thrown up, hesitating a moment, then plunging headlong back to earth. Or a man, after the final agony, taking a last deep breath — and dying.”

“For one second I stared at her like all the others as something that had dropped out of nowhere: She was no longer a number, she was simply a person; she existed as nothing more than the metaphysical substance of the insult committed against OneState. But then some one of her movements-turning, she twisted her hips to the left-and all at once I knew: I know her, I know that body resilient as a ship-my eyes, my lips, my hands know it-in one moment I was absolutely sure of it.”

“It was clear: I was sick. I never used to dream. They say in the old days it was the most normal thing in the world to have dreams. Which makes sense: Their whole life was some kind of horrible merry-go-round of green, orange, Buddha, juice. But today we know that dreams point to a serious mental illness. And I know that up to now my brain has checked out chronometrically perfect, a mechanism without a speck of dust.”

“There are books of the same chemical composition as dynamite. The only difference is that a piece of dynamite explodes once, whereas a book explodes a thousand times.”