One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.

When you're cold, don't expect sympathy from someone who's warm.

Can a man who's warm understand one who's freezing?

You should rejoice that you're in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul.

In our village, folks say God crumbles up the old moon into stars.

Beat a dog once and you only have to show him the whip.

A genius doesn't adjust his treatment of a theme to a tyrant's taste

Literature cannot develop between the categories "permitted"—"not permitted"—"this you can and that you can't." Literature that is not the air of its contemporary society, that dares not warn in time against threatening moral and social dangers, such literature does not deserve the name of literature; it is only a facade. Such literature loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as waste paper instead of being read. -Letter to the Fourth National Congress of Soviet Writers

Work was like a stick. It had two ends. When you worked for the knowing you gave them quality; when you worked for a fool you simply gave him eyewash.

Yes, you live with your feet in the mud and there's no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you're going to get out.

Prayers are like those appeals of ours. Either they don't get through or they're returned with 'rejected' scrawled across 'em.

How can you expect a man who's warm to understand a man who's cold?

Art isn't a matter of 'what' but of 'how'.

Freedom meant one thing to him—home. But they wouldn't let him go home.

The end of an unclouded day. Almost a happy one. Just one of the 3,653 days of his sentence, from bell to bell. The extra three were for leap years.

He ate his supper without bread. A double helping and bread--that was going too far. The bread would do for tomorrow. The belly is a demon. It doesn't remember how well you treated it yesterday; it'll cry out for more tomorrow.

The belly is a demon. It doesn't remember how well you treated it yesterday; it'll cry out for more tomorrow.

Work, he said, was a first-rate medicine for any illness.

That bowl of soup—it was dearer than freedom, dearer than life itself, past, present, and future.

Rejoice that you are in prison. Here you can think of your soul.

A tub was brought in to melt snow for mortar. They heard somebody saying it was twelve o'clock already. "It's sure to be twelve," Shukhov announced. "The sun's over the top already." "If it is," the captain retorted, "it's one o'clock, not twelve." "How do you make that out?" Shukhov asked in surprise. "The old folk say the sun is highest at dinnertime." "Maybe it was in their day!" the captain snapped back. "Since then it's been decreed that the sun is highest at one o'clock." "Who decreed that?" "The Soviet government." The captain took off with the handbarrow, but Shukhov wasn't going to argue anyway. As if the sun would obey their decrees!

There is a larger lesson here, because the book encompasses not just the lives of prisoners in a Soviet prison camp, but every one of us. Shukhov squeezes everything he can out of a mouthful of soup or a bite of bread…So frozen that he can’t even feel his feet, he trowels cement and lays a cinder block wall with care and patience…Shukhov takes pride in his work. In fact, even though he is starving, he can barely tear himself away at the end of the long day to go eat. He cares about his work and in that way he remains a man. Isn’t this kind of pride and gratitude and ironic detachment valuable for all people?

A couple of ounces ruled your life.

Shukhov enjoyed it. He liked people pointing at him — see that man? He's nearly done his time — but he didn't let himself get excited about it. Those who'd come to the end of their time during the war had all been kept in, "pending further orders" — till '46. So those originally sentenced to three years did five altogether. They could twist the law any way they liked. When your ten years were up, they could say good, have another ten. Or pack you off to some godforsaken place of exile.

It's warmed up a bit," Shukhov decided. "Eighteen below, no more. Good weather for bricklaying.

The days rolled by in the camp—they were over before you could say "knife." But the years, they never rolled by; they never moved by a second.

The thoughts of a prisoner—they're not free either. They kept returning to the same things. A single idea keeps stirring. Would they feel that piece of bread in the mattress? Would he have any luck in the dispensary that evening? Would they out Buinovsky in the cells? And how did Tsezar get his hands on that warm vest?

You don't have to be very bright to carry a handbarrow. So the squad leader gave such work to people who'd been in positions of authority.

Shukhov had figured it all out. If he didn't sign he'd be shot. If he signed he'd still get a chance to live. So he signed.

Three thousand six hundred and fifty-three days. The three extra days were for leap years.