... it all seems more reasonable and possible until you put it figuratively, until the metaphorical end, which is always the muzzle if you come down … - Norman Mailer

There was never a revolution to equal it, and never a city more glorious than Petrograd, and for all that period of my life I lived another and braved the ice of winter and the summer flies in Vyborg while across my adopted country of the past, winds of the revolution blew their flame, and all of us suffered hunger while we drank at the wine of equality.

Pompous words and long pauses which lay like a leaden pain over fever, the fever that one is in, over, or is it that one is just behind history?

...and dread came back like a hoot from a bully on the street outside.