One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

My 7 highlights

• 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.

• A strange-looking fellow with glasses was standing in line, his head buried in a newspaper. Tsezar at once made for him. "Aha, Pyotr Mikhailych." They bloomed like a couple of poppies.

• Shukbov remembered that this morning his fate hung in the balance: they wanted to shift the 104th from the buildlng shops to a new site, the "Socialist Way of Life" settlement. It lay In open country covered with snowdrifts, and before anything else could be done there they would have to dig holes and put up posts and attach barbed wire to them. Wire themselves in, so that they wouldn't run away. Only then would they start building.

• He held himself straight--the other zeks sat all hunched up-- and looked as if he'd put something extra on the bench to sit on. There was nothing left to crop on his head: his hair had dropped out long since--the result of high living, no doubt. His eyes didn't dart after everything going on in the mess hall. He kept them fixed in an unseeing gaze at some spot over Shukhov's head. His worn wooden spoon dipped rhythmically into the thin stew, but instead of lowering his head to the bowl like everybody else, he raised the spoon high to his lips. He'd lost all his teeth and chewed his bread with iron gums. All life had drained out of his face but it had been left, not sickly or feeble, but hard and dark like carved stone.

• He was facing the wind but not a muscle moved--his skin was as tough as the bark of an oak.

• The mess hall seemed as usual, with clouds of steam curling in through the door and the men sitting shoulder to shoulder--like seeds in a sunflower. Others pushed their way through the tables, and others were carrying loaded trays.

• More depended on the work report than on the work itself. A clever squad leader was one who concentrated on the work report.