"Anna Karenina"
A lot can be sacrificed for love; sooner or later, however, it will make you pay the price.
Tolstoy claimed that an idea for the main heroine of Anna Karenina came to him while he was lying on a sofa, smoking and trying to stay awake. He saw an image of a woman in her full aristocratic presence, with sadness in her eyes which followed him later. The only way of freeing himself of this image was finding its place in a novel.
