One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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Important Quotations Explained

1. Next, he removed his cap from his shaven head—however cold it was, he wouldn’t let himself eat with his cap on—and stirred up his skilly, quickly checking what had found its way into his bowl.


2. Writing letters now was like throwing stones into a bottomless pool. They sank without a trace. No point in telling the family which gang you worked in and what your foreman, Andrei Prokofyevich Tyurin, was like. Nowadays you had more to say to Kildigs, the Latvian, than to the folks at home.


3. “Since then it’s been decreed that the sun is highest at one o’clock.”
“Who decreed that?”
“The Soviet government.”


4. “Come on, boys, don’t let it get you down! It’s only a Power Station, but we’ll make it a home away from home.”


5. His mind and his eyes were studying the wall, the façade of the Power Station, two cinder blocks thick, as it showed from under the ice. Whoever had been laying there before was either a bungler or a slacker. Shukhov would get to know every inch of that wall as if he owned it.


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