После совещания мне нужно не столько кофе, сколько спокойствие.

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Breakdown of После совещания мне нужно не столько кофе, сколько спокойствие.

• кофе: the coffee
• после: after
• нужно: to need

Questions & Answers about После совещания мне нужно не столько кофе, сколько спокойствие.

What does не столько ..., сколько ... mean?

It means not so much ..., as ... or not X so much as Y.

So:

• не столько кофе, сколько спокойствие
  = not so much coffee as calm / peace / tranquility

The idea is comparison of importance, not quantity in a literal counting sense. The speaker is saying:

• coffee is not the main thing needed
• calmness is the more important thing

This structure is very common in Russian.

More examples:

• Мне нужен не столько отдых, сколько сон.
  = I need not so much rest as sleep.

• Это не столько проблема, сколько особенность.
  = It’s not so much a problem as a feature/characteristic.

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Why is столько used here? Doesn’t it usually mean so much / this much?

Yes, by itself столько often means so much / this much / that much. But in the fixed pattern не столько ..., сколько ..., it becomes part of a comparison.

So you should learn this whole chunk as one structure:

• не столько X, сколько Y

It does not literally mean not this much X, how much Y in normal translation. Idiomatically, it means:

• not so much X as Y
• less X than Y
• not really X, but rather Y

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