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101 " neither of us was capable of acting differently, and each viewed the other with an admiration that was inseparable from pity. "
― Elif Batuman , The Idiot
102 " She says she can’t talk,” Svetlana told me. “She’s a botanist her name is Fernanda, so of course her nickname is Fern. It suits her because ferns are so mysterious and sort of elusive and ferns can survive anywhere. "
103 " Already we were comparing to see whose way of doing things was better. But it wasn't a competition so much as an experiment, because neither of us was capable of acting differently, and each viewed the other with an admiration that was inseparable from pity. "
104 " I never thought to differentiate between you and the person who writes your letters. But I think I see your point. I send you an email: how do you know who wrote it? It could be anyone. There's no way for me to convince you. I say, "It's me!"; you say: "Who's 'me'?" Wouldn't it be amazing if it turned out that we both had ghostwriters? Just imagine them taking a long walk together, walking and walking, and talking only if something came up... "
105 " I felt a great need to tell him how I was surrounded, overwhelmed, by things of unknown or dubious meaning, things that weren't commensurate to me in any way. "
106 " From Oleg Cassini's memoirs... I learned that Cassini had also suffered from insomnia. One night, he woke from uneasy dreams with the opening of Dante's Inferno setting off 'a clamorous tumult in [his] subconscious: "Midway the journey of our life, I found myself in a dark forest."' When I read these terrible words, chills ran up my arms. I knew 'midway the journey' was supposed to mean midlife crisis. But it seemed to me one had always been midway the journey of our life, and would be maybe right up until the moment of death. "
107 " Hungary felt increasingly like reading War and Peace: new characters came up every five minutes, with their unusual names and distinctive locutions, and you had to pay attention to them for a time, even though you might never see them again for the whole rest of the book. "
108 " Definitely there are times when I'm tired and don't want to give up my seat on the bus to an old person. But I get depressed, not angry—like about how I'll be an old woman someday, and even more tired than I am now. I never think I deserve the seat more because I am reading a book." Worried this might sound self-righteous, I added, "Maybe it's just because I dont' read on the bus, it makes me carsick. "
109 " You’re always sad when you leave Rome,” he said at some point. “You’re always depressed until you go back. "
110 " On Friday, I stood in front of the class singing “Hello, Goodbye” by the Beatles. It was like falling off a cliff: time stretched, there was so much time to think different thoughts. “You say yes, I say no,” I sang. “You say stop, and I say go, go, go. "
111 " ended up having dinner with the Nagys. Everything was covered in sour cream. "
112 " We had a guide, if you can call him a guide - a sadist, in the clinical sense. What can you say about a man like that; he searched in life for his foothold and he found this one. "
113 " for a moment now I reflected on the fact that, although Meredith Wittman and I both wanted to be writers, she was going about it by interning at a magazine, whereas I was sitting at this table in a Hungarian village trying to formulate the phrase “musically talented” in Russian, so I could say something encouraging by proxy to an off-putting child whose father had just punched him in the stomach. I couldn’t help thinking that Meredith Wittman’s approach seemed more direct. "
114 " though he could certainly be witty, he wasn’t what you would really call funny, not like Dickens was. "
115 " Père Goriot’s previous owner, Brian Kennedy, had systematically underlined what seemed to be the most meaningless and disconnected sentences in the whole book. Thank God I wasn’t in love with Brian Kennedy, and didn’t feel any mania to decipher his thoughts. "
116 " It’s hard to be sincere without sounding pretentious,” she said. “I mean, what are you supposed to do if you really happen to feel like you’ve swallowed the universe? Not say so? "
117 " Already we were competing to see whose way of doing things was better. But it wasn’t a competition so much as an experiment, because neither of us was capable of acting differently, and each viewed the other with an admiration that was inseparable from pity. "
118 " Why do you look like that? You should be happy. A lot of things can happen in an airplane, at night, thirty thousand feet above the ocean. "
119 " But you aren’t really looking!” she exclaimed. “You are—” She flipped through her dictionary. “Wool, gathering!” “That’s true,” I said. “I am woolgathering.” “You are thinking about your friend,” she said. “That’s why you don’t want to listen to me.” “But Rózsa. Don’t you ever like to . . . to do woolgathering?” “No! I am not a dreamer. "
120 " I know that’s the cliché about America: ‘Oh, it’s so impersonal! Oh, I feel like a number!’ That’s not what I mean. I’m not saying the Hungarian way is better. In general, I think isolation is a good thing. With most people I’m so thankful not to be really close to them. In Hungary they would immediately start to tell you all this shit. "