m.

“No, I have as yet said nothing, or, rather, said only bookish words... and in the end the logical thing would be for me to give up and I would give up if I were labouring for a reader existing today, but as there is in the world not a single human who can speak my language; or, more simply, not a single human who can speak; or, even more simply, not a single human; I must think only of myself, of that force which urges me to express myself.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Invitation to a Beheading

“Serious literature does not exist to make life easy but to complicate it.”
― Witold Gombrowicz

“Let the son stand before his father and ask him, 'Father, tell me, why must I love you? Father, show me that I must love you,' and if that father is able to answer him and show him good reason, we have a real, normal, parental relation, not resting on mystical prejudice, but on a rational, responsible and strictly humanitarian basis. But if he does not, there's an end to the family tie. He is not a father to him, and the son has a right to look upon him as a stranger, and even an enemy.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Do you understand what the word 'wife' means? When I went out, the children called to me, 'Good-bye, father, make haste back to read The Children's Magazine with us.' No, you don't understand that! No one is wise from another man's woe.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov