ABRAMS Press

The glory of show business is that it gives the people what they want. The glory of art is that it gives us what we never knew we wanted.

You will find that things that seem normal to you don’t seem normal to others, and might even be utterly reprehensible. Perhaps we are all evil. Or, perhaps none of us are.

WE LOVE KILLING. Which is great, because we need to kill to survive. Hungry? Kill something to eat. Sick? Kill the bacteria before they kill you. Threatened by something? Kill in self-defence. Not sure what it is? Kill it, just in case.

woman has a great responsibility: to give birth. But she doesn’t give birth to ideas – that is the responsibility of men.’

The Russian classics are, admittedly, not the most obvious place to look for tips for a happier life. Russian literature is full of gloomy people wondering how on earth they have ended up in the appalling predicament in which they find themselves, looking around desperately for someone else to blame and then realizing that, in fact, they were right in the first place: life really is extremely inconvenient and annoying, and we are all just waiting to die.

it is in literature – whether novels, plays or poetry – that we really see who we are – and, perhaps even more importantly, who we don’t want to be.

story is the stand-in for human experience. It’s pretend, it’s make-believe.

anything, Tolstoy’s lesson is this: ‘How Not to Live’. These are sometimes cautionary tales rather than manuals for living.

something didn’t quite add up.

Anna realizes that her life with Vronsky is authentic but unachievable, and feels she has no option but to kill herself.