"A widow, the mother of a family,..." - Quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Ah, Father! That’s words and only words! Forgive! If he’d not been run over, he’d have come home today drunk and his only shirt dirty and in rags and he’d have fallen asleep like a log, and I should have been sousing and rinsing till daybreak, washing his rags and the children’s and then drying them by the window and as soon as it was daylight I should have been darning them. What’s the use of talking forgiveness! I have forgiven as it is!”

“Happiness lies not in happiness but only in the attempt to achieve it.”

“A beast can never be as cruel as a human being, so artistically, so picturesquely cruel.”

“If you want me again look for me under your boot soles.”

“No one comes from the earth like grass. We come like trees. We all have roots.”

“There is a cheap literature that speaks to us of the need of escape. It is true that when we travel we are in search of distance. But distance is not to be found. It melts away. And escape has never led anywhere. The moment a man finds that he must play the races, go the Arctic, or make war in order to feel himself alive, that man has begin to spin the strands that bind him to other men and to the world. But what wretched strands! A civilization that is really strong fills man to the brim, though he never stir. What are we worth when motionless, is the question.”

“Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all they have.”

“What would become of the world if the condemned started to confide their heartaches to the executioners?”

“I suppose an artist takes the elements of his life and rearranges them and then has them perceived by others as though they were the elements of their lives.”