Ian Morris

“I looked silently at her lips. All women are lips, all lips. Some are pink and firmly round: a ring, a tender guardrail from the whole world. And then there are these ones: a second ago they weren’t here, and just now — like a knife-slit — they are here, still dripping sweet blood.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“Everything used to revolve around the sun; now I knew it all revolved around me-slowly, blissfully, squinting its eyes.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“Now I no longer live in our clear, rational world; I live in the ancient nightmare world, the world of square roots of minus one.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We

“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.”
― Yevgeny Zamyatin, We