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“The Anna Karenina Fix” Quotes

I recently read “The Anna Karenina Fix: Life Lessons from Russian Literature” by Viv Groskop. Here’s the quotes I found most interesting.

“As they say in Russian, “Life is better there where we are not.”” (128)

“Happiness is always something on the horizon. We need to head towards it, but, once we get there, it moves away again.” (132)

“Whatever your delusion about what you need in order to be happy is, it becomes more powerful when it is reinforced by other people.” (133)

“When he was eight-nine and living in America and headed off to his shack every day to write for hours on end. At the time, he was extremely infirm. His wife said, ‘He hasn’t left the house for five years. Hie’s missing a vertebra… But every day he sits and works.’ That’s all you need to know about Solzhenitsyn. He’s missing a vertebra. But every day he sits and works.” (149)

“Solzhenitsyn kept regular hours and did so religiously: from 8am to 10pm every day for seventeen years, supposedly without a day off. Sometimes, he broke off to hit a ball across the adjacent tennis court.” (154)

“When his last play Moliere premiered (this was one that Stanislavsky rehearsed for four years), it received twenty-two curtain calls. But it also had four significant negative reviews and within six weeks had been canceled, after a final, unsigned article in Pravda finished it off. The headline? ‘Superficial Glitter and False Content.’ Can you imagine having your play rehearsed for four years, it getting twenty-two curtain calls and then having to close within six weeks?” (167)

“You are only really ‘from’ somewhere if you want to speak to your children in that language.” (173)

Liked the quotes? Buy the book here.

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