* * * * *
Hæmorrhage: "It's an abscess that's just burst inside you … it's all right, have some more vodka."
* * * * *
The intelligentsia are good for nothing, because they drink a lot of tea, talk a lot in stuffy rooms, with empty bottles.
* * * * *
When she was young, she ran away with a doctor, a Jew, and had a daughter by him; now she hates her past, hates the red-haired daughter, and the father still loves her as well as the daughter, and walks under her window, chubby and handsome.
* * * * *
He picked his teeth and put the toothpick back into the glass.
* * * * *
The husband and wife could not sleep; they began to discuss how bad literature had become and how nice it would be to publish a magazine: the idea carried them away; they lay awake silent for awhile. "Shall we ask Boborykin to write?" he asked. "Certainly, do ask him." At five in the morning he starts for his work at the depot; she sees him off walking in the snow to the gate, shuts the gate after him…. "And shall we ask Potapenko?" he asks, already outside the gate.