Russka: the Novel of Russia

as I said,I believe in fate.Things happen as they are meant to be.We just have to recognize our destiny.

—Dicen —explicó el boyardo de Vladímir— que Alejandro ha dejado instrucciones a su familia para que le den Moscú cuando sea mayor. —¡Moscú! ¡Esa ciudad miserable! —No es gran cosa —convino el otro—, aunque no está mal situada.

But, she smiled, it seems to me he has a warm heart.

The answer to Russia's problems lies here, in Russia. . . . The church is the key. If Russia's guiding force is not religion, then her people will be listless. We can have Western laws, independent judges, perhaps even parliaments -- but only if they grow gradually out of a spiritual renewal. That has to come first.

From dawn each day the boats traveled, until their shadows grew so long that they joined each vessel with the one behind so that, instead of resembling a procession of dark swans in the distance, they seemed to turn into snakes, inching forward on waters turned to fire by the western sunset ahead. While on the bank, the last red light from the huge sky eerily caught the stands of bare larch and birch so that it appeared as if whole armies with massed lances were waiting by the riverbank to greet them.