The Greatest Works of Dostoevsky: Crime and Punishment + The Brother's Karamazov + The Idiot + Notes from Underground + The Gambler + Demons (The Possessed / The Devils)

I play the fool, Pyotr Alexandrovitch, to make myself agreeable. Though I really don’t know myself, sometimes, what I do it for.

“Why in such haste?” asked Svidrigaïlov, looking at him curiously. “Everyone has his plans,” Raskolnikov answered gloomily and impatiently.

. And then I saw, young man, I saw Katerina Ivanovna, in the same silence go up to Sonia’s little bed; she was on her knees all the evening kissing Sonia’s feet, and would not get up, and then they both fell asleep in each other’s arms . . . together, together . . . yes . . . and I . . . lay drunk.”

Soon he sank into deep thought, or more accurately speaking into a complete blankness of mind;

In short, I maintain that all great men or even men a little out of the common, that is to say capable of giving some new word, must from their very nature be criminals — more or less, of course.

he is morose, gloomy, proud and haughty, and of late — and perhaps for a long time before — he has been suspicious and fanciful. He has a noble nature and a kind heart. He does not like showing his feelings and would rather do a cruel thing than open his heart freely. Sometimes, though, he is not at all morbid, but simply cold and inhumanly callous

“Yes . . . I’m covered with blood,” Raskolnikov said with a peculiar air; then he smiled, nodded and went downstairs.

To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s. In the first case you are a man, in the second you’re no better than a bird.

blood ‘renews,’ when comfort is preached as the aim of life.