Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary... - Boris Pasternak

"I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them."

"Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary."

"Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary."

"Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation's tears in shoulder blades."

"And so it turned out that only a life similar to the life of those around us, merging with it without a ripple, is genuine life, and that an unshared happiness is not happiness."