Yevgeny Zamyatin — We [1298]

Both teachers and students often had to cross die frozen city on foot and sit, in unheated rooms, dressed in old coats, sweaters, mufflers, chilled and hungry but totally absorbed in the brilliant discussions of literature. — Yevgeny Zamyatin, We, 1298

Note

The physical detail of writers crossing a frozen city to sit in unheated rooms gives a tangible, tactile sense of intellectual devotion under extreme privation.