One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich Quotes
"Can a man who's warm understand one who's freezing?"
"The steady accumulation of sensory detail gives this work of fiction the air of incontrovertible truth."
"The language of the novel always serves the senses, and emotion is a luxury only the reader can afford."
"Plotting, scavenging, dissenting, and praying, Ivan Denisovich and the other members of Gang 104 test out different survival strategies."
"Stars fall every now and then, the holes have to be filled up."
"Work is what horses die of. Everybody should know that."
"If the roof burst into flames, he still wouldn't hurry."
"You could count on a month with nowhere to go for a warm, not so much as a dog kennel."
"Any other way, we'd all have turned our toes up long ago, that's for sure."
"Every fiber in his body was tensed to the utmost: the work assigner would be bellowing at the door any moment now."
"The Baptist was reading his Bible, not altogether silently, but sort of sighing out the words."
"But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or a wrongdoer, or a mischief-maker; yet if one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that name let him glorify God."
"Every man in the gang, nodding or not, rose to his feet, yawned, and made for the door."
"There is no worse moment than when you turn out for work parade in the morning."
"A man's thoughts are no freer than he is: they come back to the same place, worry over the same thing continually."
"The smoke seemed to reach every part of his hungry body, he felt it in his feet as well as in his head."
"A zek's life was always the same. Relax for a minute and somebody was at your throat."
"A piece of bread is better than any spoon for cleaning out a porridge bowl."
"He’d learned to keep his whole mind on the food he was eating."
"Easy money had no weight: you didn’t feel you’d earned it."
"The great thing was that he’d cut the scavenger Fetyukov out and was now inhaling smoke, with the hot ash beginning to burn his lips."
"A zek's day is a long one, though, and he can find time for everything."
"Life in the camp was like water off a duck's back to them."
"For two months the Power Station had stood abandoned, a gray skeleton out in the snow. But now Gang 104 had arrived. What kept body and soul together in these men was a mystery."
"The work gang was invented to take care of that. It isn’t like a work gang outside, where Ivan Ivanovich and Pyotr Petrovich each gets a wage of his own. In the camps, things are arranged so that the zek is kept up to the mark not by his bosses but by the others in his gang."
"If they didn’t warm the place up in the next two hours, they’d all be done for, every last man."
"One look at the whip is enough for a beaten dog!"
"More depends on the percentages than the work itself. A foreman with any brains concentrates more on the percentages than on the work."
"When a gang feels the pinch, as 104 did now, there’s never any slacking. They jump to it, willy-nilly."
"Amazing how time flew when you were working. He’d often noticed that days in the camp rolled by before you knew it. Yet your sentence stood still, the time you had to serve never got any less."
"All the cook had to do was sprinkle meal and salt into the caldron and divide the fat into two parts, one for the pot and one for himself."
"Don't let it get you down! It's only a Power Station, but we'll make it a home away from home."
"The beauty of a work gang is that the big bosses can't make a zek hurry even in working hours, but if the foreman says work during the break, work it is."
"You could see a long way from the top of the Power Station. The whole compound, covered with snow and deserted."
"They took him... I now wish I'd joined the band of thieves myself."
"Just when you're beginning to enjoy yourself, it's quitting time."
"The whole column had one thing and one thing only on its mind."
"Who is the convict’s worst enemy? Another convict. If zeks didn’t squabble among themselves, the bosses would have no power over them."
"Their days were too full to remember any other home."
"He could knock it back in a single gulp. For the moment that ladleful means more to him than freedom, more than his whole past life, more than whatever life is left to him."
"We shall survive. We shall survive it all. God willing, we’ll see the end of it!"
"The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow."
"Smaller than your finger crooked at the middle knuckle, but the devil would cut fatback five fingers thick."
"Only somebody with no conscience at all would say lend us your knife so we can cut our sausage, and don’t think you’re getting any."
"Thank heaven for your cozy hut, and keep your nose clean."
"The quick louse is always first on the comb."
"What good is freedom to you? If you’re free, your faith will soon be choked by thorns! Be glad you’re in prison."
"The end of an unclouded day. Almost a happy one."
"Just one of the 3,653 days of his sentence, from bell to bell. The extra three were for leap years."