Boris Pasternak

“Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.”

“What is laid down, ordered, factual is never enough to embrace the whole truth: life always spills over the rim of every cup.”

“Literature is the art of discovering something extraordinary about ordinary people, and saying with ordinary words something extraordinary.”

“You and I, it's as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.”

“Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the happiness of having a strong reason to live.”

“They loved each other, not driven by necessity, by the 'blaze of passion' often falsely ascribed to love. They loved each other because everything around them willed it, the trees and the clouds and the sky over their heads and the earth under their feet.”

“It is no longer possible for lyric poetry to express the immensity of our experience.”

“And why is it, thought Lara, that my fate is to see everything and take it all so much to heart?”

“Love is not a potato. You can't just throw it out the window.”

“I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn't of much value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.”

“Surprise is the greatest gift which life can grant us.”

“How wonderful to be alive, he thought. But why does it always hurt?”

“Immortality is another word for life, a stronger word for it.”

“In every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as he sees it.”

“About the evil of possessing money: It's not the money itself that is evil, as the Rabbis say; it's the greed, the desire to keep it for oneself.”

“I have the impression that if he didn't complicate his life so needlessly, he would die of boredom.”