11/22/2004|||110112899592597518||||||

QUOTABLE

More, as promised, from Richard Pipes:

"I entered a streetcar in Leningrad and to buy a ticket took out the loose change from my pocket: mixed with Soviet coins was a Kennedy half-dollar. The woman selling tickets, sitting by the entrance, spotted it instantly and asked 'Are you an American?' When I confirmed, she insisted on yielding me her seat. As the streetcar lumbered on its way she pointed out to me various landmarks and, loudly extolling the beauties of her city, urged me as a Russian-speaker, to resettle there with my family. The streetcar stopped: passengers poured in and out. Taking advantage of the temporary commotion, the woman, her facial expression suddenly transformed from falsely amiable to genuinely anxious, bent down and asked me in an urgent whisper: 'We live like dogs, don't we? Tell me, please.' "

|||Clive|||http://clivedavis.blogspot.com/2004/11/quotable-more-as-promised-from-richard.html|||11/22/2004 01:45:00 pm|||||||||

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