The Slynx

by Tatyana Tolstaya

someone laughs at you, it’s like he’s showing his power over you, and you, boy, are down in the ditch.

It’s one thing to cook for strangers: Who knows what kind of people they are? But it’s another to cook for your kids. Some people say you should cook the same for everybody. But who ever does that?

But one of your own—he’s cozy. His eyes are different. You just look at him and you can see he wants to eat.

But good’s only good if something good comes of it.

I think it’s better to know the truth than to live life in darkness . . .”

As soon as the bickering starts, all thought of art, or poems, or anything else, disappears.

Illness isn’t in books, my dear boy, it’s in people’s heads.”

Sometimes he would find something he hadn’t read: rusty looking scribbles, bent lines, mistakes on every page. Reading something like that was like eating dirt and rocks.

You don’t really know how to read, books are of no use to you. They’re just empty page-turning, a collection of letters. You haven’t learned the alphabet of life. Of life, do you hear me?”

there are concepts inaccessible to you: sensitivity, compassion, generosity . . .”

evil in fact comes from the silent acquiescence of the indifferent.