Vaishali

“Laila has moved on. Because in the end she knows that’s all she can do. That and hope.”
― Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns

“Give me your honest opinion. I don't want truth with a veil on—I like naked ladies naked.”
― Christina Stead, Miss Herbert (the suburban wife)

“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.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“We all have a Monster within; the difference is in degree, not in kind.”
― Douglas Preston, The Monster of Florence