Reader

“They certified that I was sane; but I know that I am mad." This confession gives us the key to what is most important and significant in Tolstoy's hidden life.”
― Lev Shestov, In Job's Balances: On the Sources of the Eternal Truths

“Not long ago, after my last trip to Russia, I had a conversation with an American very eminent in the field of politics. I asked what he read, and he replied that he studied history, sociology, politics and law.

"How about fiction - novels, plays poetry?" I asked.

"No," he said, "I have never had time for them. There's so much else I have to read."

I said, "Sir, I have recently visited Russia for the third time and don't know how well I understand Russians; but I do know that if I only read Russian history I could not have had the access to Russian thinking I have had from reading Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Pushkin, Turgenev, Sholokhov, and Ehrenburg. History only recounts, with some inaccuracy, what they did. The fiction tells, or tries to tell, why they did it and what they felt and were like when they did it."

My friend nodded gravely. "I hadn't though of that," he said. "Yes, that might be so; I had always thought of fiction as opposed to fact."

But in considering the American past, how poor we would be in information without Huckleberry Fin, An American Tragedy, Winesburg, Ohio, Main Street, The Great Gatsby, and As I Lay Dying.”
― John Steinbeck, America and Americans

“At night I sit in my room and read the Bible.
In the distance, the sea roars.

Then I lay awake for a long time
and think of the quiet, pale man from Nazareth.”
― Joseph Goebbels, Michael

“There is a tragic clash between Truth and the world. Pure undistorted truth burns up the world.”
― Nikolai Berdyaev