Cancer Ward examines the relationship of a group of people in the cancer ward of a provincial Soviet hospital in 1955, two years after Stalin's death. We see them under normal circumstances, and also reexamined at the eleventh hour of illness. Together they represent a remarkable... read more
“"A man dies from a tumour, so how can a country survive with growths like labour camps and exiles?"”Kostoglotov
“As he left the room it seemed to him that he was walking between two eternities, on one side a list of the living, with its inevitable crossings out, on the other-- eternal exile. Eternal as the stars, as the galaxies.”Kostoglotov
“His fate lay there, between his chin and his collarbone. There justice was being done.”Rusanov
“A moment before, he hadn't remembered, he'd forgotten that all lips are not the same, that kisses can be different, that one can be worth a hundred others.”Kostoglotov
“But if we stop loving animals, aren't we bound to stop loving humans too?”Kostoglotov
“First I lived under guard, then I lived in pain, and now I want to live just a little while without guards and without pain, simultaneously without one or the other. This is the limit of my ambition.”Kostoglotov
“They were separated by this department store...”Kostoglotov
“This what was so striking: how could this man be simply "evil"? Children, do not grow up to be evil! Children, do not destroy defenseless creatures!”Kostoglotov
Gorky who said the only people worthy of freedom are those prepared to go out and fight for it every day.Highlighted by 7 Kindle customers
It is not our level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes lie within our power, so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him.Highlighted by 5 Kindle customers
Tolstoy who had said about his brother: he had all the abilities but none of the defects of a real writer.Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers
Frustration? Depression? When melancholy sets in, a kind of invisible but thick and heavy fog invades the heart, envelops the body, constricting its very core. All we feel is this constriction, this haze around us. We don’t even understand at first what it is that grips us.Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers
everyone who acts breeds both good and evil. With some it’s more good, with others more evil.Highlighted by 3 Kindle customers
Preceded by Belle Du Seigneur, and followed by The First Circle.
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