clever title

i'm reading anna karenina by leo tolstoy.

sometimes i feel like i'm too ridiculous of a person to read books like this. i think i've said that before. saying things like "i'm reading macbeth" seems wrong somehow. it probably doesn't help that i giggle a little after i say it.

this is a good book.

i've never read anything russian before. i'm a big fan of british writing because british humor is the best. british people have such a sharp wit. it's impossible to match. but i love it.

i don't know if all russian writers are like this, but tolstoy is blowing my mind. he's so descriptive. he's able to describe feelings i've never even been able to explain to myself.

there's this one character in the story that i'm really relating to. he has a really unhealthy infatuation with this girl, and it's destroying him. i'm not currently experiencing that, but i have in the past. it was not fun. and the descriptions of his feelings are so accurate.

i don't know where this story line will end up, because i'm only, uhhh, 1/6 of the way through the book. i get the feeling that they're going to end up together, and it's going to be seen as romantic. but that's not how i'm reading these quotes. this guy is obsessed.

but i was just reading these quotes again and felt like sharing them. they aren't all from that character, but they're all about the same subject. making romantic love an idol. i don't think that's what i'm supposed to be taking away from anna karenina, but so far...that's what i'm seeing. people having affairs. people feeling depressed because of rejection.

but it is a great book. it's all very real emotion. it's very well written.

Levin was wondering what that change in Kitty’s expression had meant, and alternately assuring himself that there was hope, and falling into despair, seeing clearly that his hopes were insane, and yet all the while he felt himself quite another man, utterly unlike what he had been before her smile and those words, “Good-bye till this evening.”

…for him all the girls in the world were divided into two classes: one class – all the girls in the world except her, and those girls with all sorts of human weaknesses, and very ordinary girls: the other class – she alone, having no weaknesses of any sort and higher than all humanity.

And those who only know the non-platonic love have no need to talk of tragedy. In such love there can be no sort of tragedy.

She saw that her daughter was in love with him, but tried to comfort herself with the thought that he was an honorable man, and would not do this. But at the same time she knew how easy it is, with the freedom of manners of to-day, to turn a girl’s head, and how lightly men generally regard such a crime.

He felt himself, and did not want to be any one else. All he wanted now was to be better than before. In the first place he resolved that from that day he would give up hoping for any extraordinary happiness, such as marriage must have given him, and consequently he would not so disdain what he really had. Secondly, he would never again let himself give way to low passion, the memory of which had so tortured him when he had been making up his mind to make an offer.

All these traces of his life seemed to clutch him, and to say to him: “No, you’re not going to get away from us, and you’re not going to be different, but you’re going to be the same as you’ve always been; with doubts, everlasting dissatisfaction with yourself, vain efforts to amend, and falls, and everlasting expectation, of a happiness which you won’t get, and which isn’t possible for you.” This the things said to him, but another voice in his heart was telling him that he must not fall under the sway of the past, and that one can do anything with oneself.

His ideas of marriage were, consequently, quite unlike those of the great majority of his acquaintances, for whom getting married was one of the numerous facts of social life. For Levin it was the chief affair of life, on which its whole happiness turned. And now he had to give up that.

More than once she had told herself during the past few days, and again only a few moments before, that Vronsky was for her only one of the hundreds of young men, forever exactly the same, that are met everywhere, that she would never allow herself to bestow a thought upon him.

I’ve nothing to grieve over and be comforted about. I am too proud ever to allow myself to care for a man who does not love me.

Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the wretchedest of people – that’s in your hands.

He was impatiently looking forward to the news that she was married, or just going to be married, hoping that such news would, like having a tooth out, completely cure him.