there are certain works where you have to look at the whole width and breadth of it and you have to acknowledge that this book was written about you, which isn't to imply some kind of delusional idea that fyodor dostoëvsky was somehow aware of your existence, but that this is the general arc and bend of your life, that this is where you begin, that this is where you are, and that this is where you are going to be.

dostoëvsky has managed to instil in this pages what i can never hope to achieve, which is to say: honesty, raw emotion, sincerity... perhaps at long last.

i do not possess the tenth of talent that dostoëvsky doubtless possessed. i can never measure up to this towering giant of a literary genius. my only recourse is towards literature. if one wants to expel all the pent-up frustrations, all the petty jealousies, all the pathetic displays of insecurity, then one must find it somewhere written down on a page and swiftly eliminate it from the depths of one's conscience, never thinking about it ever again, because to think like that is to live in misery, and to live in misery is to subject yourself to thousands of tiny deaths daily.

but then again, one might realise, you already live like that, and perhaps the only true recourse left is to find company in the darkness.