Menu
Search
Thirty-Five Years Old - Hermann Karlovich
Donate

Hermann Karlovich 35

Oh, reader, I felt as fresh as a child after my little snooze; my soul was rinsed clean; I was, in fact, only in my thirty-sixth year, and the generous remainder of my life might be devoted to something better than a vile will-o’-the-wisp. Really, what a fascinating thought; to take the advice of fate and, now, at once, leave room, forever leave and forget, and spare my poor double… And, who knows, maybe he was not the least like me after all, I could see only the crown of his head, he was fast asleep with his back to me. Thus an adolescent, after yielding once again to a solitary and shameful vice, says to himself with inordinate force and clearness: ‘That’s finished for good; from this time forth, life shall be pure; the rapture of purity’; thus, after having voiced everything, having lived through everything in advance and had my fill of pain and pleasure, I was now superstitiously keen to turn away from temptation for ever.

Vladimir Nabokov  ·  Despair (Otchayanie) (Trans. Vladimir Nabokov)

35

Guy Clinch

London Fields

Martin Amis

"Feeling neither vigour nor its opposite, feeling no closer to life than to death, feeling thirty-five, Guy pressed on..."

35

Trader Faulkner

Night Train

Martin Amis

"I’m thirty-five. You begin to want to see a fresh face..."

35

Edward Rochester

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography

Charlotte Brontë

"...he was past youth, but had not reached middle-age; perhaps he might be thirty-five..."

35

Jay

'Baby Blue'

Edna O'Brien

"It was the night of his thirty-fifth birthday, and they had parted but a week..."

35

Rollo Martins

The Third Man

Graham Greene

"Rollo Martins walked quickly away as though his long gangly legs wanted to break into a run, and the tears of a boy ran down his thirty-five-year-old cheeks..."

35

John Claggart

Billy Budd, Sailor

Herman Melville

"Claggart was a man about five and thirty, somewhat spare and tall, yet of ill figure upon the whole..."

35

Randle Patrick McMurphy

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Ken Kesey

"McMurry, Randle Patrick. Committed by the state from the Pendleton Farm for Correction. For diagnosis and possible treatment. Thirty-five years old. Never married..."

35

Harry Goldweiser

Manhattan Transfer

John Dos Passos

"That’s the trouble with me. I’m thirtyfive an I dont care any more..."

35

Daniel Quinn

City of Glass

Paul Auster

"We know, for example, that he was thirty-five years old. We know that he had once been married, had once been a father, and that both his wife and son were now dead..."

35

John Self

Money: A Suicide Note

Martin Amis

"I am thirty-five years old. According to the last good book I read, this means that I am half way through my time travel, my travel through time..."