A Quote by Vladimir Nabokov

Although I could never get used to the constant state of anxiety in which the guilty, the great, and the tenderhearted live, I felt I was doing my best in the way of mimicry.
When I was younger, I think that I felt like I could only live one way, and I had to figure out which of those one ways it was going to be. I have no anxiety about making the wrong decision.
I think living in the West, we live in a culture where everybody strives for perfection, whether it's in body, health, spirit, skin, hair, nails. Perfect happiness would be a constant state of bliss, which doesn't exist. Growing up and going through the loss I went through, I never had a moment where I believed a constant state of bliss was possible. Instead, I tried to create many moments. But, I didn't know how to get there. Because of what I went through, I have a natural tendency towards darkness. Though it may be in my DNA as well.
I get anxiety and distressed from external stimuli quite easily, so if I'm in a constant state of self-protection, it's exhausting.
After all, what is happiness? Love, they tell me. But love doesn't bring and never has brought happiness. On the contrary, it's a constant state of anxiety, a battlefield; it's sleepless nights, asking ourselves all the time if we're doing the right thing. Real love is composed of ecstasy and agony.
The population of the world is a conditional population; these are not the best, but the best that could live in the existing state of soils, gases, animals, and morals: the best that could yet live; there shall be a better, please God.
They were singing, Gillette, the best a man can get, with a lot of guys hugging their fathers and sailing and riding bikes. I suddenly felt a long way from the best a man could get and I thought it would be nice to get from there to the best.
Meditation did not relieve me of my anxiety so much as flesh it out. It took my anxious response to the world, about which I felt a lot of confusion and shame, and let me understand it more completely. Perhaps the best way to phrase it is to say that meditation showed me that the other side of anxiety is desire. They exist in relationship to each other, not independently.
I definitely do live my life at a different pace now than I used to... I feel like I'm guilty of all the overindulgences of a guy in his 20s and early 30s could've gone through, but I look back on it with great fondness. I don't have a lot of regrets.
The great object was to get rid of Christianity, and to convert our churches into halls of science. The plan was not to make open attacks on religion, although we might the clergy and bring them into contempt where we could: but to establish a system of state - we said national - schools, from which all religion was to be excluded.
I never considered myself a writer. I'm a teacher. In a way, I feel kind of... kind of guilty for all the people who are writers who hope to be on the best-seller list someday, who live for that and don't get it, and it came to me as a kind of free gift, like God coming to Abraham and announcing, 'I've chosen you!'
When I was in my 20s, I felt guilty if I didn't exercise - now I feel guilty if I do. It's time I could be spending with my family.
Like so many new moms, I felt anxiety over the impending birth of my daughter. However, most of the anxiety I felt was around the idea of raising a child. I wasn't focused on potential risks to my health or hers that could occur during the actual birth.
Evolution is a constant state. You evolve and become comfortable in situations in which you might have felt alien in the past.
You almost have to create situations in order to write about them, so I live in a constant state of self-imposed poverty. I don't want to live any other way.
I felt like a coach. I just wanted to do what I could as far as helping guys understand what was going to happen early and get the best feedback I could and be a great teammate.
I get tired when I keep shorting my sleep, but I always make it to the gym. In our house, we live by this: 'Never quit, never cancel, never be late.' We've found it's a great way to live.
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