Dovydas M

“Nantucket, Ishmael proclaims, is “a mere hillock, and elbow of sand; all beach,
without a background.” He then proceeds to spin off joke after joke about how sandy
and sterile the island is. There are so few trees on Nantucket that islanders carry
around scraps of wood “like bits of the true cross in Rome.” They plant toadstools to
provide themselves with some shade. In order to wade through all the sand, they
wear the gritty equivalent of snowshoes. The sea is so omnipresent “that to their very
chairs and tables small clams will sometimes be found adhering.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“Pnin smiled and said: “It is like the splendid story of
Tolstoy—you must read one day, Victor—about Ivan Ilyich
Golovin who fell and got in consequence kidney of the cancer.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin

“Remember the Simone de Beauvoir quote,” she said, “ ‘You can’t have everything you want but you can want everything you want.’ ”
― Miranda July, All Fours

“Man," said the Ghost, "if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!”
― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol