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peytonaaa's Reviews (927)

informative reflective

"In either instance (of alarm or false reverence), we deny her personhood, the specific individuality we insist upon for ourselves."
mysterious reflective

"The response of the landscape
expects no answer."
emotional reflective sad

"I am scared of the unknown and I love it. This is my sexuality."
funny mysterious reflective

"I looked at the sun, thinking it was still too early, but knowing that even if I believed it was still too early, whatever was going to happen to me was going to happen to me, because the time for it to happen had finally come."
emotional reflective

"When I started to walk down the road, my steps were quick and light, and as I walked these words would go around in my head: 'My mother would kill me if she got the chance. I would kill my mother if I had the courage.' At the beginning of my walk, as I chanted the words my voice had a happy note, as if the quickness and lightness of my feet signaled to me that I would never give her the chance. But as the road went on, things changed. I would say the same words, but slower and slower and in a sad way; my feet and the rest of my body became heavy. It was as if it had dawned on me that I would never have the courage with which to kill my mother, and then, since I lacked the courage, the chance would pass to her. I did not understand how it became so, but just the same it did." 
emotional reflective sad

"'Education is everything,' Ngotho said. Yet he doubted this because he knew deep inside his heart that land was everything. Education was good only because it would lead to the recovery of the lost lands."

Another Ngũgĩ banger--devastating and I think ahead of its time.
reflective sad

"The core of this love is annihilation."
challenging emotional funny mysterious reflective

"The most enchanting things in nature and art are based on deception."

Folks, he's done it again! Well, not really again, since this was written before the most famous of his works, but still--what a masterpiece! I will say that if you are planning to read this, be aware that it has a lot of references to previous Russian literature (as it was Nabokov's last book originally written in Russian), so it might be confusing if you aren't very familiar with that.
mysterious reflective

"For I do not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I make, the population of phantoms resembling me increases. Somewhere they live, somewhere they multiply. I alone do not exist."

This is so fun and good. You can read it in a single sitting, but true Nabokov obsessives can pick out all the themes and motifs that'll reoccur in his later work.