John

“It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“During this journey it was as if he again thought over his whole life and reached the same old comforting and hopeless conclusion: that there was no need for him to start anything, that he had to live out his life without doing evil, without anxiety, and without wishing for anything.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“It falls to the lot of even the most glorious flags to be thrown in the mud. Glory, what men call glory, is often thick with mud.”
― Curzio Malaparte, The Skin

“It's like squeezing tripe: nothing comes out,' he said, meaning the Colasberna brothers, their partners, the town in general and Sicily as a whole.”
― Leonardo Sciascia, The Day of the Owl