Barbara

“I like the fact that my compatriots have such vacant and protruding eyes. They fill me with virtuous pride. You can imagine what eyes are like (in the capitalist world). ...such eyes look at you with distrust, reflecting constant worry and torment. That's what they're like in the land of ready cash.
How different from the eyes of my people! Their steady stare is completely devoid of all tension. They harbor no thought - but what power! What spiritual power! Such eyes would not sell you. They couldn't sell anything or buy anything. You could spit in the eyes, and they’d call it God's (divine) dew...”
― Venedikt Erofeev, Moscow to the End of the Line

“A certain man once lost a diamond cuff-link in the wide blue sea, and twenty years later, on the exact day, a Friday apparently, he was eating a large fish - but there was no diamond inside. That’s what I like about coincidence.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Laughter in the Dark

“Man is profoundly dependent on the reflection of himself in another man's soul, be it even the soul of an idiot.”
― Witold Gombrowicz, Ferdydurke

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols