“And Mitya, as he remembered, suddenly became terribly interested in his [the interrogator’s] big rings, one with an amethyst, and another with a bright yellow stone, transparent and of a most wonderful brilliance. And for a long time afterwards he recalled with surprise how these rings irresistibly drew his eye even through all those terrible hours of interrogation, so that for some reason he was unable to tear himself away and forget them as something quite unsuitable in his position.”

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 1880, translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, 1990.