"Wearing a black, shining, satin smock, tied, like a wasp, with a little Caucasian belt, a man tore himself away from the telephone."

"We had just sat down to eat dinner when suddenly a person entered. Surprised that someone would decide to come to the commune at such an hour, we immediately turned toward the doors. But the steam pouring into the room overwhelmed our gazes."

"Most important was the wart. If it was where it should be, it meant there hadn't been a mistake. How I fixed that wart in my mind! It was big, dark, positioned on the cheek, right at his very mouth, and, if he was nervous or speaking, it would move up and down. And, because of its thick hairs, there was foam on it."

"It was less than a kilometer from Geraim Glebovich's private farm "The Well-Off Child-Stealing Demon" to the commune. The farm spread out over a wide, expansive plain sewn with oats, massive untrammeled beautiful clover, and the sort of market-ready winter wheat that his neighbors over at the commune would never be able to brag about."

"Late on the night of the holiday I came to have a rest on the sofa in the chapel -- but there were already a couple of peasant girls there there, praying, along with some old bag going on about her alcoholic nephew...."

"When we lived at the collective farm it seemed to us that we were healthier, smarter, and ten times happier that anyone living in the city. In the spring we filled the pits up with manure and rotten earth that we brought down from the ridges."

"Anyone who comes to Selmashenstroi with a cut-out, pre-formulated impression of a factory that's nothing but a chaos of raw materials, half-finished products scattered amid puddles on the 'lawn,' dust, and dirty buildings blackened with smoke and fumes, will be disappointed."

"Our coachman, a quiet, shy little fellow, a member of the commune, rather second-rate, stopped his horse at a thatched roof under which were the communarians' carts and old, broken down buggies. I get down and have a look around: everything seems like it's still in the old, landowning economy. I search out people with my eyes and ask the coachman: who do I need to talk to about this?"