Lidia Yuknavitch, From Reading The Waves: A Memoir Published In 2025

the urge to ignore your assigned summer readings in favour of starting yet another Dostoevsky book that will ruin your life

“I mistrust illuminations: what we take for a discovery is very often only a familiar thought that we have not recognized.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre, Saint Genet

read classic poetry in the bath.  scratch shakespeare quotes into your desk.  keep black-and-white pictures in a golden locket.  learn the language you’ve always wanted to learn.  dance in the rain, even if you’re not sure how.  read wikipedia pages on unsolved mysteries at two in the morning.  live your life the way you want to, make your own rules, become who you’ve dreamed of being.  because really, who’s stopping you?

- Ivan Turgenev

haiku #6, tathev simonyan

- Kazuo Ishiguro - The Paris Review Interview: The Art of Fiction.

hey sorry your boyfriend said that russian classics are about that life is bleak. yeah he meant dostoyevsky and tolstoy. no, he didn't look beyond any of the lowest lows of the stories. he didn't even see the overarching themes of beauty and hope and connection. frankly we have all been laughing about him and we're gonna beat him up now. sorry