Robert Teeter

“This praise of his strategic abilities was especially pleasing to [Tsar] Nicholas, because, though he was proud of his strategic abilities, at the bottom of his heart he was aware that he had none. And now he wanted to to hear more detailed praise of himself.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murád

“Elena Pavlovna was for him [Tsar Nicholas I] the personification of those empty people who talked not only about science and poetry, but also about governing people, imagining that they could govern themselves better than he, Nicholas, governed them.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Hadji Murád

“Every single pleasure I can imagine or have experienced is more delightful, more of a pleasure, if you take it in small sips, if you take your time. Reading is not an exception.”
― Amos Oz

“Van, The Good Novel will not be an ordinary bookstore. That's our challenge. Our customers won't be ordinary customers. The people we'll see in our store will be people who never buy a book because it just came out, unless they adore the author already, but for other reasons that have nothing to do with its pub date, because they couldn't case less about that. . . .”
― Laurence Cossé, A Novel Bookstore