"Knowing you have something good to read before bed is among the most pleasurable of sensations."
"Non-Russian readers do not realize two things: that not all Russians love Dostoievsky as much as Americans do, and that most of those Russians who do, venerate him as a mystic and not as an artist."
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Source: Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.64, Vintage
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"And the rest is rust and stardust."
"Do not be angry with the rain; it simply does not know how to fall upwards."
"Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness. "No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom."
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"Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form."