Commonplace Book of Claws (Speak, Memory)

"Legend and logic, a rare but strong partnership." (62)

"My mother was at her bedside, and Aunt Pasha's last words were: 'That's interesting. Now I understand. Everything is water, vsyo-voda.'" (68)

"I remember him as a slender, neat little man with a dusky complexion, gray-green eyes flecked with rust, a dark, bushy mustache, and a mobile Adam's apple bobbing conspicuously above the opal and gold snake ring that held the knot of his tie. He also wore opals on his fingers and in his cuff links. A gold chainlet encircled his frail hairy wrist, and there was usually a carnation in the buttonhole of his dove-gray, mouse-gray or silver-gray summer suit." (69)

"That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die." (77)

"My first English friends were four simple souls in my grammar -Ben, Dan, Sam and Ned. There used to be a great deal of fuss about their identities and whereabouts-'Who is Ben?' 'He is Dan,' 'Sam is in bed,' and so on. Although it all remained rather stiff and patchy (the compiler was handicapped by having to employ-for the initial lessions, at least- words of not more than three letters), my imagination somehow managed to obtain the necessary data. Wan-faced, big-limbed, silent nitwits, proud in the possession of certain tools ('Ben has an axe'), they now drift with a slow-motioned slouch across the remotest backdrop of memory; and, akin to the mad alphabet of an optician's chart, the grammar-book lettering looms again before me." (79-80)

". . . words are meant to mean what they mean." (81)