Nirmal

“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

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

“To hold her, to keep her -- just as she was -- with her cruelty, with her vulgarity, with her blinding blue eyes, with her miserable poetry, with her fat feet, with her impure, dry, sordid, infantile soul. All of a sudden he thought: If people are reunited in Heaven (I don’t believe it, but suppose), then how shall I stop it from creeping upon me, that shriveled, helpless, lame thing, her soul? But this is the earth, and I am, curiously enough, alive, and there is something in me and in life ---”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin

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