Anna, finally, on the subway

I'm watching Out of Africa right now...she just got diagnosed with syphilis...didn't see that one coming...

I thought I'd type up some of my favourite Anna Karenina quotes so far, I got a lot of reading done on the subway today. I can't say what attracts me to these quotes, I seem to like the ideas:

"He went down, trying not to look long at her, as though she were the sun, but he saw her, as one sees the sun, without looking."

Oblonsky: "You have everything before you."
Levin: "And you have everything behind you?"
Oblonsky: "Well, perhaps not, but the future is yours and only the present is mine - and that too only in part."

(talking about women who lead a life of sin) "fallen creatures" < I think I'd like to name something that someday.

"Well you see,' said Oblonsky, 'you are a thoroughly earnest and sincere man. This is your strength and your limitation. You are thoroughly earnest and sincere and you want all life to be earnest and sincere too, but it never is. You despise public service because you think its practice ought to be as single-minded as its aims, but that never happens. You want the activity of every single man always to have an aim, and love and family life always to be one and the same thing. But that doesn't happen either. All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade."

I really like Levin's character. I don't normally immediately and completely relate to a character that I have nothing in common with but I find he thinks and feels as I do. Very irrationally, but with total commitment to his heart and he feels so deeply it consumes him.

It's funny, I remember looking up quotes from this book a while ago, for a project I had to do (obviously before I'd started reading it). I realise now that finding quotes online is ridiculous - it's so subjective - the words one person is going to find 'quotable' are not necessarily the ones others would find so. Half the fun of reading is finding a sentence and getting the feeling that, "Yeah, I know what this means, and I've never read it worded like that anywhere else." Much more visceral.