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"La oss skåle for Misja!" Sergej hevet koppen med konjakk. "Det finnes nok av mennesker, men ikke av pingviner! De må tas vare på!"

Riktignok hadde han nå penger, han hadde pingvinen Misja og tre sølvglinsende karper som svømte i badekaret. Men kunne det egentlig veie opp for romanen som han ikke hadde fått skrevet?

Let the mad poets say whate'er they please
Of the sweets of Fairies, Peris, Goddesses,
There is not such a treat among them all,
Haunters of cavern, lake, and waterfall,
As a real woman, lineal indeed
From Pyrrha's pebbles or old Adam's seed.

Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

"The most terrifying and important test for a human being is to be in absolute isolation," he explained. "A human being is done only because other people are watcjhing. Alone, with no witnesses, he starts to learn about himself - who is he really? Sometimes, this brings staggering discoveries. Because nobody's watching, you can easily become an animal: it is not necessary to shave, or to wash, or to keep your winter quarters clean - you can live in shit and no one will see. You can shoot tigers, or choose not to shoot. You can run in fear and nobody will know. You have to have something - some force, which allows and helps you to survive without witnesses. Markov had it. "Once you have passed the solitude test, continued Solkin, "you have absolute confidence in yourself, and there is nothing that can break you afterward. Any changes, includingchanges in the political system, are not going to affect you as much beacsue you know that you can do it yourself. Karl Marx said that 'Freedom is a recognized necessity.' I learned this in university, but I didn't understand what it meant until I'd spent some time in the taiga. If you understand it, you will survive in the taiga. If you think that freedom is anarchy, you will not survive.

A hand-to-mouth existence is, for most people who have time and inclination to read books like this, nothing more than a quaint and vivid turn of phrase.

He takes two tea bags in a four-ounce cup and he doesn't mince words: when a pair of earnest British journalists once asked him how he thought the tigers could be saved, his answer, "AIDS," caught them off guard. "But don't you care about people?" one of them asked. "Not really," he replied. "Especially not the Chinese."

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness, -
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.

Jeg er for nysgjerrig, for spørrende, for overmodig til å nøye meg med et grovt svar. Gud er et grovt svar, en taktløshet mot oss tenkere –, i grunnen også et grovt forbud mot oss: dere skal ikke tenke!

Det var omtrent da han ble kald rundt livet, at han avdekket sitt ansikt – han var nemlig tildekket – og sa – det var det siste han ytret:
«Kriton, jeg skylder Asklepios en hane. Betal dere min gjeld, og glem det ikke.»

Men greit nok, hun har levd 86 år på Guds klode, hun har overlevd Hitler og Mussolini, hun har overlevd Stalin, hun får heller tåle at hun ikke vet hvor i togsettet hun hører hjemme. Jeg er ikke den første jøden som har hatt det problemet, klukkler hun.

Mon tro om de er framme eller på vei videre? På vei videre, gjetter jeg. Skriver jeg. Folk som er framme, har det med å forlate stasjonen. Fri seg fra reisas grep. Finne tilbake til det andre livet. Det vante livet. Det bofaste, hjemmekjære, ordentlige.

Kanskje reiser jeg så sjelden eller så dårlig som jeg gjør, fordi jeg ikke liker å forlate timingen i livet mitt. Eller fordi jeg tror at så lenge det jeg vil skal skje med meg, bare kan skje når jeg er hjemme, når jeg er her og ikke der, så vil jeg heller ikke, kan jeg heller ikke, reise.

En låt som sier at det å være på veien er som å være satt i parantes.

Ingen har noengang kunnet konstantere feber hos meg. En lege som i lang tid behandlet meg som nervøs, sa til sist: «Nei! Deres nerver er det ingen ting i veien med, jeg er bare nervøs selv.»

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.