“Yagoda’s fate is tragic. He tried to hold back the terror but gave in under pressure from the main criminal. Bastards everyone of us: Yagoda and I, and those who replaced us. We became criminals because we did not murder the one who forced us and forces our successors to commit crimes. I have three days left to live, and I am not afraid to say that this main criminal is Stalin!”
Unnamed Prisoner in conversation with Anna Larina
“The whole world is a series of miracles, but we're so used to them we call them ordinary things.”
Hans Christian Andersen
“Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes: it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something else is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
