“They were seated in the very front row and, as they listened to Trenet, their eyes glittered like those of their neighbours. Their tears, however, when they came, welled up from quote another source.”

 - Last sentence from The Dreamers, by Gilbert Adair

Lolita audiobook excerpt - She Had Absolutely Nowhere Else To Go (performed by Jeremy Irons)

This is what happens right before Humbert Humbert and Lolita begin their “extensive travels all over the States”.   

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar 

Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar 

Vladimir Nabokov, The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov 

David Copperfield audiobook excerpt - The Word Was Not Spoken (narrated by Patrick Tull)

When David returns to his home made strange by his mother’s marriage to Mr. Murdstone, the narrator goes into this long speculation about his entire life might have been different and better if Mr. Murdstone had offered him one word of encouragement at this key moment. This seems to be the key tragedy of this novel: there are a thousand moments when a single word can make all the difference in improving (or ruining) that kid’s life. But you can only know in retrospect, looking back on the event, what would have made things better.

Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (Penguin Classics) 

Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the ‘80’s 

Michel Houellebecq, Paris review — The Art of Fiction, No. 206

Henry Miller in 1976, performing The Tailor Shop, a short story from his novel Black Spring, published in 1936 by the Obelisk Press in Paris, France.

Hunter S. Thompson, Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

Franz Kafka, The Trial

Franz Kafka, The Trial