“Moscow, Rome, London, Paris stay in place. Leningrad and New York float, spreading all their sails, cutting space with their prows, and can disappear, if not in reality, then in the imagination of the poet creating a myth, a mythical tradition on the grounds of his secret experience.” IfsRealityImaginationSpaceSecretCitiesCuttingNew YorkPoetCreatingTraditionMythDisappearLondonParisRomeSailFloatsMoscowLeningrad Author:Nina Berberova
“It looks now as if everything has been profitable to me. And if the payment has sometimes been excessive, it was afer all the payment, for life, and there cannot be and is no excessive payment for life.” IfsLooksHas BeensSometimesProfitablePayment Author:Nina Berberova
“[On New York:] ... a city rose before me. It was narrow and tall like a gothic temple, surrounded by water, and ... it suddenly appeared, as if with a slight push it detached itself out of the invisible into the visible.” IfsWaterCitiesNew YorkRoseInvisibleVisibleTemplesTallGothicDetached Author:Nina Berberova
“I think that an anthill is better than a nest ... that in the anthill among a hundred thousand or a million you are freer than in a nest, where all sit around and look at one another, waiting until scientists finally discover ways to make us mind readers. ... the psychology of the nest is loathsome to me, and I always sympathize with one who flees his nest, even if he flees into an anthill, where it may be crowded but one can find solitude - that most natural, most worthy state of man, that precious and intense state of being conscious of the world and of oneself.” IfsThinkingMenWorldWayMindLooksMayStatesWaitingNaturalMillionsPsychologyReaderThousandSolitudeConsciousHundredScientistOneselfWorthyIntenseCrowdedNests Author:Nina Berberova