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  "title": "The Fixer",
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      "text": "If only his innocence were written on a sheet of paper, he could pull it out and say, ‘Read, it’s all here,’ but since it was hidden in himself they would know it only if they sought it, and they were not seeking.",
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      "slug": "he-had-learned",
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      "text": "He had learned, it wasn’t easy; the experience was his; it was worse than that, it was he. He was the experience. It also meant that now he was somebody else than he had been, who would have thought it? So I learned a little, he thought, I learned this but what good will it do me? Will it open the prison doors? Will it allow me to go out and take up my poor life again? Will it free me a little once I am free? Or have I only learned to know what my condition is – that the ocean is salty as you are drowning, and though you knew it you are drowned? Still, it was better than not knowing. A man had to learn, it was his nature.",
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      "text": "‘Little brother,’ he said to Yakov, making the sign of the cross over him, ‘don’t lose hope. The stones of the bridge may crumble but the truth will come out.’ ‘And till then,’ sighed the fixer, ‘what of my wasted youth?’",
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      "slug": "who-will-help",
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      "text": "‘Who will help me?’ he cried out in his sleep, but the other prisoners had their own anguish, their own bad dreams.",
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      "slug": "no-one-says",
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      "text": "‘No one says it’s easy. Still, you are not alone.’ (Bibikov) ‘In my cell I’m alone. In my thoughts I’m alone. I don’t want to sound bitter to you because I’m thankful for your help – ’ (Yakov)",
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      "slug": "i-respect-man",
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      "text": "I respect man for what he has to go through in life, and sometimes for how he does it, but he has changed little since he began to pretend he was civilized, and the same thing may be said about our society. That is how I feel, but having made that confession let me say, as you may have guessed, that I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist. One often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experiences to live through, attempt to understand, and if at all possible, give order to; but one must not withdraw from the task if he has some small thing to offer – he does so at the risk of diminishing his humanity. (Bibikov to Yakov)",
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      "slug": "jesus-cried-out",
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      "text": "Jesus cried out help to God but God gave no help. There was a man crying out in anguish in the dark, but God was on the other side of his mountain. He heard but he had heard everything. What was there to hear that he hadn’t heard before?",
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      "slug": "yakov-shepsovitch-what",
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      "text": "Yakov Shepsovitch, what more can I tell you? Take heart in the truth and endure your trials. Sustain yourself in your innocence. (Bibikov)",
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      "text": "Yakov counted. He counted time though he tried not to. Counting presupposed an end to counting, at least for a man who used only small numbers. How many times had he counted up to a hundred in his life? Who could count forever? – it piled time on. The fixer had torn some splinters off sticks of firewood. The long splinters were months, the short, days. A day was a bad enough burden of time but within the day even minutes could do damage as they piled up. When one had nothing to do the worst thing to have was an endless supply of minutes. It was like pouring nothing into a million little bottles.",
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      "text": "Nobody can burn an idea even if they burn the man.",
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      "text": "The truth is I’m a half-ignorant man. The other half is half-educated.",
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      "text": "You wait. You wait a minute of hope and days of hopelessness. Sometimes you just wait, there’s no greater insult. You sink into your thoughts and try to blot out the prison cell. If you’re lucky it dissolves and you spend a half hour out in the open, beyond the doors and walls and the hatred of yourself. If you’re not lucky your thoughts can poison you.",
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      "text": "‘Yakov Ivanovitch,’ Zina said, pouring herself another glassful of wine which she at once drank down, ‘do you believe in romantic love? I ask because I think you guard yourself against it.’ ‘Whether I do or don’t it doesn’t come easily to me.’ ‘I heartily agree that it oughtn’t to come too easily,’ Zina said, ‘but it seems to me that those who are serious about life – perhaps too serious – are slow to respond to certain changes in the climate of feeling. What I mean to say, Yakov Ivanovitch, is that it’s possible to let love fly by like a cloud in a windy sky if one is too timid, or perhaps unable to believe he is untitled to good fortune.’",
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      "text": "He could not foresee any future in the future.",
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      "text": "There's something cursed, it seems to me, about a country where men have owned men as property. The stink of that corruption never escapes the soul, and it is the stink of future evil. (Bibikov)",
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