I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces. - Vladimir Nabokov

The lovely thing about humanity is that at times one may be unaware of doing right, but one is always aware of doing wrong.

To the sound of this voice, to the music of the chessboard's evil lure, Luzhin recalled, with the exquisite, moist melancholy peculiar to recollections of love, a thousand games that he had played in the past... There were combinations, pure and harmonious, where thought ascended marble stairs to victory; there were tender stirrings in one corner of the board, and a passionate explosion, and the fanfare of the Queen going to its sacrificial doom.

...really, what a strange man he is, thought klara, with that aching feeling of loneliness which always overcomes us when someone dear to us surrenders to a daydream in which we have no place.