Andrew Cooper

“So long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Miserables cannot fail to be of use.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“My thoughts are an ocean, they wash woefully up against their limits.”
― Nescio, Amsterdam Stories

“As long as there is a Church, there will be little Torquemadas”
― Graham Greene, Monsignor Quixote

“The Elm Log
By Alexander Solzhenitsyn

We were sawing firewood when we picked up an elm log and gave a cry of amazement. It was a full year since we had chopped down the trunk, dragged it along behind a tractor and sawn it up into logs, which we had then thrown on to barges and wagons, rolled into stacks and piled up on the ground - and yet this elm log had still not given up! A fresh green shoot had sprouted from it with a promise of a thick, leafy branch, or even a whole new elm tree.

We placed the log on the sawing-horse, as though on an executioner's block, but we could not bring ourselves to bite into it with our saw. How could we? That log cherished life as dearly as we did; indeed, its urge to live was even stronger than ours.”
― Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Stories and Prose Poems