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The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol

This volume includes a selection of Gogol's most renowned tales, showcasing his distinctive style and exploration of themes such as satire, social commentary, and the supernatural. more

Author

Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was a prominent 19th-century Russian dramatist and novelist. His works are known for their sharp satire and humor, which have had a profound impact on Russian literature. more

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“When a song is ended, it leaves nothing but a feeling in those who heard it until that feeling, slowly moving backwards in time, collapses under pressure from more recent feelings and is replaced. Events become memories, unreliable stories, fade away at the ends. Unconnected and distinct from the day's experience, they become one of the millions of strata that make us who we are. We are the sum of all our experiences. We are waves on the ocean, interacting with and affected by all the other waves that move and die and are washed up on the shore. We are each a breath, a song, a flower. We are time itself, and mine has been long and I've collected many disconnected layers.”

StoriesFeelingsLife LessonsMemoryWho We AreLayersExperiences
Book:Seed to Dust: A Gardener's Story
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“So a life builds up in layers, piecemeal, a kind of haphazard engineering that has elements of skill and cunning - the previous layers mostly hidden, as are the smaller mounds within, the clumps of different-coloured earth, the burnt offerings, the nodules of pain and the delight. The hard graft of the chopped-off antlers, picking and stabbing and scraping. The embers of old fires, old flames, in mute fragments of charcoal.”

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Book:On Silbury Hill
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“She had heard of the genetic code that could shape an eye or hand from passing proteins. Deoxyribonucleic acid. It contained the entire set of instructions for constructing a respiratory system and a digestive one, as well as the grip of an infant's hand. Chess was like that. The geometry of a position could be read and reread and not exhausted of possibility. You saw deeply into the layer of it, but there was another layer beyond that, and another, and another.”

ChessLayersDnaEndless PossibilitiesGenetic Code
Book:The Queen's Gambit
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“Pindar turned his thoughts back to time. What exactly was a moment? Was it the shortest span of time that could be represented by art? Perhaps moments were like sheets of gold leaf, hammered ever so thin, each leaf the locus for new thoughts. Time would then be a matter of layering, so that each second had a stack of moments on top, a baklava of time. Was this why his new Babylonian fragment had the word layers, then a gap where a piece was chipped out, then time? Or was that word branches rather than layers? Perhaps time wasn't flat after all. In that case, no sheaves like baklava, but filaments like kataifi, those nests made of shredded pastry drenched with syrup or honey. He saw the pastry threads as silver, now, each strand branching into new trees of silvery time growing out from each second, all of them inhabited by breath. For breathing had become necessary to his conception of time, inspiration and expiration. He needed the gods to breathe into him, breathe through him like a flute.”

TimeBreathingLayersMomentPastriesBaklava
Book:The Garden Party: A Novel
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“A sandwich loaf (for those who don't know) is a beautiful creation, a multilayer sandwich disguised as a cake. It had fallen out of fashion in recent years, but at one time it was all the rage to serve at bridal showers and christenings. To make a sandwich loaf, you take one loaf of bread, slice it horizontally, and fill each layer with a different filling. The loaves from Scandia were filled with three layers: chicken salad, ham salad, and egg salad. Then the whole thing is frosted with cream cheese, piped with flowers and waves until it becomes a floofy white log. To serve it, you slice it vertically like a cake, each piece containing the three different layers.”

LayersSandwichSaladsLoafLike A Cake
Book:Marrying the Ketchups
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