Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness. "No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.

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Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.

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Why should I tolerate a perfect stranger at the bedside of my mind?

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The future is but the obsolete in reverse.

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Nothing revives the past so completely as a smell that was once associated with it.

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It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.

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Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don't stop to think, don't interrupt the scream, exhale, release life's rapture.

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Loneliness as a situation can be corrected, but as a state of mind it is an incurable illness.

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My mind speaks English, my heart speaks Russian, and my ear prefers French.

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I have no desires, save the desire to express myself in defiance of all the world’s muteness.

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