juliaflafla

He had destroyed the thing she loved most; she, in her turn, had exposed him to failure through expectations he was unable to fulfil. Without meaning to, they had found one another's deepest vulnerabilities: they had arrived, by this awful shortcut, at the place where for each of them a relationship usually ended, and set out from there.

– Transit, Rachel Cusk (p.24)

At the first meeting of Literature 311 in September 1953, Vladimir Nabokov asked the students to explain in writing why they had enrolled in the course.

At the next class he approvingly reported that one student had answered, “Because I like stories.”

–Lectures on Literature, Vladimir Nabokov