Nic S

“Then she sent Schweik for lunch and wine. And before he returned, she put on a filmy gown which made her extremely attractive and alluring. At lunch she drank a bottle of wine and smoked several Memphis cigarettes. And while Schweik was in the kitchen feasting on army bread which he soaked in a glass of brandy she retired to rest.

"Schweik," she shouted from the bedroom. "Schweik!"

Schweik opened the door and beheld the young lady in an enticing attitude among the cushions.

"Come here."

He stepped up to the bed, and with a peculiar smile she scrutinized his sturdy build. Then, she pulled aside the thin covering which had hitherto concealed her person.

And so it came about that when the lieutenant returned from the barracks, the good soldier Schweik was able to inform him:

"Beg to report, sir, I carried out all the lady's wishes and treated her courteously, just as you instructed me."

"Thank you, Schweik," said the lieutenant. "And did she want many things done?"

"About six," replied Schweik.”
― Jaroslav Hašek, The Good Soldier Švejk

“We are inclined sometimes to wring our hands much more profousely over the situation of another than the mental attitude of that other [..] would seem to warrant. People do not grieve so much sometimes over their own state as we imagine. They suffer, but they bear it manfully. [...] We see, as we grieve for them, the whole detail of their blighted carreer, a vast confused imagery of mishaps covering years, much as we read a double decade tragedy in a ten-hour novel. The victim, meanwhile, for the single day or morrow is not actually anguished. He meets his unfolding fate by the minute and the hour ast it comes.”
― Theodore Dreiser, Sister Carrie

“People who read are hiders. They hide who they are. People who hide don’t always like who they are.”
― André Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“I cannot recall having believed, even as a child, that the purpose of reading fiction was to learn about the place commonly called the real world. I seem to have sensed from the first that to read fiction was to make available for myself a new kind of space. In that space, a version of myself was free to move among places and personages the distinguishing features of which were the feelings they caused to arise in me rather than their seeming appearance, much less their possible resemblance to places or persons in the world where I sat reading.”
― Gerald Murnane