Nirmal

“…two lumpy old ladies in semitransparent raincoats, like potatoes in cellophane…”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin

“There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I do not know if it has ever been noted before that one of the main characteristics of life is discreteness. Unless a film of flesh envelopes us, we die. Man exists only insofar as he is separated from his surroundings. The cranium is a space-traveler's helmet. Stay inside or you perish. Death is divestment, death is communion. It may be wonderful to mix with the landscape, but to do so is the end of the tender ego.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin

“Oh! just, subtle, and mighty opium! that to the hearts of poor and rich alike, for the wounds that will never heal, and for 'the pangs that tempt the spirit to rebel,' bringest an assuaging balm; eloquent opium! that with thy potent rhetoric stealest away the purposes of wrath; and to the guilty man, for one night givest back the hopes of his youth, and hands washed pure of blood....”
― Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater