- "Could he be born from the start / If only for a fleeting moment, / To be so dear to your heart?" - Ivan Turgenev (pg. 7)
- "The sky was so bright, and there were so many stars that, gazing upward, one couldn't help wondering how so many whimsical, wicked people could live under such a sky." (pg. 7)
- "There's something inexpressibly moving in our Petersburg countryside when, with the arrival of spring, it suddenly reveals itself in all its might and with all its God-given gifts; when it dresses up, adorns itself with bright, multicolored flowers. . . . It makes me think of a weak, frail, sickly young girl, usually regarded with pity, sometimes with compassionate love, and sometimes not even noticed, who for one moment, as if by accident, suddenly becomes immensely beautiful; and, struck and charmed, you can't help wondering what force could have lighted the flame in those sad, dreamy eyes." (pg. 11)
- "if you feel my arm tremble, it's because it has never yet been held by a pretty hand like yours." (pg. 14)
- "Besides, isn't it better for you when everything is out in the open? For I don't know how to be silent when my heart is talking." (pg. 14)
- "I've only gone around dreaming that one day I might meet someone. If you only knew how many times I've fallen in love that way. . . ." (pg. 14)
- "But how's that, who did you fall in love with?"
- "Why, no one in particular, just with the ideal woman, the one I'd dreamed of. I can dream up whole novels, you know." (pg. 15)
- "Talk to her shyly, respectfully passionately; tell her that I was perishing in my loneliness; beseech her not to send me away" (pg. 15)
- "I'm simply a dreamer who has little real life, and moments like this are so rare in my existence that I must repeat them again and again in my thoughts. You'll stay in my thoughts throughout the night--throughout the whole year." (pg. 16)
- "I've been completely alone. Alone, all alone--do you understand what that means?" (pg. 19)
- "dreamers live in those corners. A dreamer, if you want me to define him, is not a real human being but a sort of intermediary creature. He usually installs himself in some remote corner, shrinking even in the daylight. And once he's installed in that corner of his, he grows into it like a snail" (pg. 21)
apr 3 2013 ∞
apr 3 2013 +