“People fear anyone who differs from what is considered normal, and in a small town the idea of normal can be as narrow as the streets.”

“This world is a pretty good place under normal conditions, but anyone who’s read Russian history knows what a bad place it can be.”

“A man who has no mental needs, because his intellect is of the narrow and normal amount, is, in the strict sense of the word, what is called a philistine.”

“I was always fascinated by people who are considered completely normal, because I find them the weirdest of all”

“Ignore the normal people, who knows what they’re thinking.”

“This was always the hard part. If you knew what was normal to the enemy, then everything became easy: you could lull them to sleep by feeding them normal, and you could scare the hell out of them by suddenly taking normal away. But normal to Afghans and Chechens was so different from normal to Russians that it took a bit of work for a man like Sokolov to establish what it was.”

“Engineers are all basically high-functioning autistics who have no idea how normal people do stuff.”

“This fear of the power of the totalitarian state is something normal people cannot understand.”

“Besides, the normal people here wouldn’t see it. That was what “different” meant. It’s just another word for lonely.”

“True love. Is it normal
is it serious, is it practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world of their own?”