Sofie

“He was forty-two years old, and he could see nothing before him that he wished to enjoy and little behind him that he cared to remember.”
― John Williams, Stoner

“Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.”
― James Joyce, Dubliners

“We have so much to say, and we shall never say it.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“No artist has painted
A true portrait of Lenin
Ages to come will complete
Lenin's unfinished portrait.

Did Poletaev understand the tragic implication of his lines about Lenin?”
― Vasily Grossman, Forever Flowing