The Exchange and Other Stories Quotes

“In the meantime Moscow was spreading farther and farther, beyond the circumferential highway, across fields and ravines. It was throwing up building after building, stone mountains with a million lighted windows; it was laying bare the ancient soil, traversing it with giant concrete pipes, strewing the land with foundation pits, laying asphalt, building up, tearing down, destroying without a trace. And every morning the subway platforms and bus stops would be swarming with people, more and more of them crowded together with each passing year.”
― Yury Trifonov, The Exchange and Other Stories

“There is nothing in the world except life and death. And everything that is dependent on the first is happiness, and everything dependent on the second is the destruction of happiness. And there is nothing else in this world.”
― Yury Trifonov, The Exchange and Other Stories