Katya

“It’s too pragmatic for me,” Valenti said. “The know-how is good enough for technology, not for science.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“People often told him that Lan was very beautiful, but Pei had no opinion about that. He had never really noticed other women, and to say that a woman was or was not beautiful meant looking at her with an experienced eye.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“Our comrades in the textile industry have increased their production more than seventy-five percent.”
Now they could show their delight, even though they could not hold hands or kiss, and everybody knew that there was nothing personal and selfish in the way they smiled at each other, that the light in their eyes and the tenderness of their smiles were due to the increase of the production rate of the textile workers and to the general economic growth of the country. There were no more private little worlds in China.
He went on telling her all the good news, for it would be embarrassing to sit there in silence. There were many other things he wished to say, and above all he wanted to take her in his arms; he wanted that more than anything else in life, almost as much as he wanted the prosperity and freedom of Chinese people. It was time for him to go now, but he could not tear himself away and he sat there rather stiffly, with the red-star peaked cap on his knees and his shaved head exposed, trying to think of something more to say, some of those things that make a girl happy.
“The figures show that we have raised both our industrial and agricultural output by ten percent this year.”
This was a good excuse, and she took his hand in both of hers and pressed it lovingly.
The doctors smiled, the nurses smiled and the patients smiled, sharing their happiness. He was the youngest general in the People’s Army, and though he had come to see his girl, he was addressing all of them and sharing his presence with them.
She held his hand as long as she could without making it appear personal, and then he saw tears in her eyes, but it was all right, nobody could see them.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp

“Mathieu didn’t know at all what to do about May. He felt a kind of nausea, probably induced by the regular movement of the ball. She was having religious fits again. Jesus Christ, she thought, how many thousands of years will it take people to get over their folklore?
There was nothing he could do about that now. She wouldn’t listen to all the scientific explanations and would go on imagining things. People will always keep imagining things. It was impossible to convince them that there is nothing there. Nothing at all. Only matter. Particles. Energy.”
― Romain Gary, The Gasp