One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Spitting bones out on the floor is considered bad manners.

Can a man who’s warm understand one who’s freezing?

Alyoshka, standing next to Shukhov, gazed at the sun and a smile spread from his eyes to his lips. Alyoshka’s cheeks were hollow, he lived on his bare ration and never made anything on the side—what had he got to be happy about? He and the other Baptists spent their Sundays whispering to each other. Life in the camp was like water off a duck’s back to them. They’d been lumbered with twenty-five years apiece just for being Baptists. Fancy thinking that would cure them!

Your foreman matters more than anything else in a prison camp: a good one gives you a new lease of life, a bad one can land you six feet under.

The two Estonians sat like two brothers on a low concrete slab, sharing half a cigarette in a holder. They were both tow-haired, both lanky, both skinny, they both had long noses and big eyes. They clung together as though neither would have air enough to breathe without the other. The foreman never separated them. They shared all their food and slept up top on the same bunk. On the march, on work parade, or going to bed at night, they never stopped talking to each other, in their slow, quiet way. Yet they weren’t brothers at all—they’d met for the first time in Gang 104.

He looked up at the sky and gasped: it had cleared and the sun was nearly high enough for dinnertime. Amazing how time flew when you were working. He’d often noticed that days in the camp rolled by before you knew it. Yet your sentence stood still, the time you had to serve never got any less.

When you’re flat on your face there’s no time to wonder how you got in and when you’ll get out.

Never mind, it wasn’t all that cold outside. A great day for bricklaying.

He gave the man a kidney punch. And a rabbit punch.

Who is the convict’s worst enemy? Another convict. If zeks didn’t squabble among themselves, the bosses would have no power over them.

Shukhov was eating his supper without bread: two portions with bread as well would be a bit too rich. The bread would come in useful tomorrow. The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.

The wolves are out sunbathing—come and try it! Give us a light, old man!” He lit up just inside the door and went out on the porch. “Wolf’s sunshine” was what they jokingly called the moonlight where Shukhov came from.