Quotes from the book «Город лестниц»

"Мы обращаемся к нашему прошлому, чтобы узнать, как пришли к настоящему."

So if you’re losing the debate, you change the conversation.

The sort of people who intermittently review their children, she thinks, rather than raise them

Coffee refreshes the body,” says Shara. “Tea refreshes the soul.

The political instinct might wear different clothes in different nations, but underneath the pomp and ceremony it's the same ugliness.

Envy the fire, for it is either going or not. Fires do not feel happy, sad, angry. They burn, or they do not burn.

Time renders all people and all things silent. And gods, it seems, are no exception.

Just because the nightmare you expected comes true, it doesn't make it any less terrifying.

Shara was already an avid reader by then, but she had never realized until that moment what books meant, the possibility they presented: you could protect them forever, store them up like engineers store water, endless resources of time and knowledge snared in ink, tied down to paper, layered on shelves.... Moments made physical, untouchable, perfect, like preserving a dead hornet in crystal, one drop of venom forever hanging from its stinger.

She felt overwhelmed. It was--she briefly thinks of herself and Vo, reading together in the library--a lot like being in love for the first time.

There is no crueler hells then committee work....