Marginalia
Sentences worth carrying out of a book.
“Dear Milena, I wish the world were ending tomorrow. Then I could take the next train, arrive at your doorstep in Vienna, and say: ‘Come with me, Milena. We are going to love each other without scruples or fear or restraint. Because the world is ending tomorrow.’ Perhaps we don’t love unreasonably because we think we have time, or have to reckon with time. But what if we don’t have time? Or what if time, as we know it, is irrelevant? Ah, if only the world were ending tomorrow. We could help each other very much.”
“Milena, if a million loved you, I am one of them, and if one loved you, it was me, if no one loved you then know that I am dead.”
“The world, he realised, was made not of places, but of people.”
“She's a good woman, he thought. The kind of woman whose goodness is oppressive.”
“"ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS."”
“It isnt't only that he died, or how he died; it is what he died believing. And so I try to be kind in everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.”
“But you could not have pure love or pure lust nowadays. No emotion was pure, because everything was mixed up with fear and hatred. Their embrace had been a battle, the climax of victory. It was a blow struck against the Party. It was a political act.”
“Your hand is cold, mine is as hot as fire. How blind are you, Nastenka!”