Book: The Luzhin Defense

But no one had yet been able to get to the bottom of what was most captivating in it: it was the mysterious ability of the soul to perceive in life only what once attracted and tormented in childhood, at that time when the soul’s sense of smell is unmistakable; look for the funny and touching; to constantly feel unbearable, tender pity for a creature living helplessly and miserably, to feel, a thousand miles away, how in some Sicily a thin-legged donkey with a shaggy belly is being roughly beaten. When she actually met the offended creature, there was a feeling of a legendary eclipse, when an inexplicable night sets in, and ashes fly, and blood appears on the walls - and it seemed that if now - right now - you don’t help, you won’t be able to stop someone else’s torment , the existence of which in such a world conducive to happiness is impossible to explain, she herself will suffocate, die, her heart will not stand it. And therefore she lived in constant secret excitement, constantly anticipating a new hobby or a new pity, and they said about her that she adores dogs and is always ready to lend money - and listening to petty rumors, she felt like in childhood, during that game when you leave the room, and others invent various opinions about you. And among the players, among those to whom she came out after being in the next room (where you sit, waiting to be called, and honestly hum something, so as not to overhear, or open a random book, and, like a released spring, it jumps out a piece of a novel, the end of an incomprehensible conversation), among these people, whose opinion it was necessary to guess, there was now a man, rather silent, heavy on his feet, completely unknown what he thought about her.

The official was touchy and tortured, and ate diabetic bread, and probably received a meager salary, was married, and the child had a rash all over his body. He attached cosmic significance to a piece of paper that they didn’t have and had to get, the whole world rested on this piece of paper and hopelessly crumbled into dust if a person was deprived of it. Moreover, it turned out that the Luzhins could not receive it before the monstrous deadlines, millennia of despair and emptiness had expired, and only by writing petitions they were allowed to alleviate this worldly sorrow.

The memory of man is short-sighted.

All the future is unknown, but sometimes it gets a special nebula, like on help of the natural stealth of fate comes some other force, the elastic spreading this fog, which bounces the idea.

When you say "lemon" and make the inevitably long face, and when I say "orange" - big smiles.

Mother tried to find my daughter some details of the marriage, and its curious asked; "are You pregnant? I'm sure I'm pregnant." "What are you,' replied the daughter, I gave birth".

Shine until bladesa.

Didn't have the adult words to his childhood experiences.

Draw was also nice. He drew the mother, and she was offended; painted in profile wife, and she said that if she had nothing then to marry her.

Professor forbade Luzhin to give a reading of Dostoevsky, who, according to the Professor, produces a depressing effect on the psyche of the modern man

He heard a chilly music, and someone shut the door to music is not cold.

Most of all he was struck by the fact that from Monday it will be by Luginin.

... and in that moment, that Luzhin unclenched his hand, at the moment that poured into his mouth rapid the icy air, he saw what eternity obsequious and inexorably spread out before him.

Happiness, for which he clung, stopped; the April this day, froze forever, and somewhere, in another plane, continued movement days, urban spring, a rustic summer - a vague threads that barely touched him.