Marina Rakhlin

“Широк человек, слишком даже широк, я бы сузил.”
― Достоевский, Братья Карамазовы часть 1-2 роман в 4 частях

“Only you can decide what breaks you. Only you.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Wings and Ruin

“That's the key, isn't it? To know the darkness will always remain, but how you choose to face it, handle it...that's the important part. To not let it consume. To focus upon the good, the things that fill you with wonder.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Silver Flames

“Not long ago, after my last trip to Russia, I had a conversation with an American very eminent in the field of politics. I asked what he read, and he replied that he studied history, sociology, politics and law.

"How about fiction - novels, plays poetry?" I asked.

"No," he said, "I have never had time for them. There's so much else I have to read."

I said, "Sir, I have recently visited Russia for the third time and don't know how well I understand Russians; but I do know that if I only read Russian history I could not have had the access to Russian thinking I have had from reading Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pushkin, Turgenev, Sholokhov, and Ehrenburg. History only recounts, with some inaccuracy, what they did. The fiction tells, or tries to tell, why they did it and what they felt and were like when they did it."

My friend nodded gravely. "I hadn't though of that," he said. "Yes, that might be so; I had always thought of fiction as opposed to fact."

But in considering the American past, how poor we would be in information without Huckleberry Fin, An American Tragedy, Winesburg, Ohio, Main Street, The Great Gatsby, and As I Lay Dying.”
― John Steinbeck, America and Americans