“And the more I drink the more I feel it. That's why I drink. Because when I drink, I look for compassion, I look for feeling... I drink because I want to suffer.”

Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I did not bow down to you, I bowed down to all the suffering of humanity.”

Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I like them to talk nonsense. That's man's one privilege over all creation. Through error you come to the truth! I am a man because I err! You never reach any truth without making fourteen mistakes and very likely a hundred and fourteen.”

Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky

“You know what kind of man I think you are? You're the kind of man who would stand there and smile at his torturers while they were tearing out his guts--if only he could find faith or a god.”

Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky

“It's a burden to us even to be human beings–men with our own real body and blood; we are ashamed of it, we think it a disgrace and try to contrive to be some sort of impossible generalized man.”

Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering, and that is a fact.”

Notes From The Underground, Fyodor Dostoevsky

“The degree of civilization in a society is revealed by entering its prisons.”

The House of the Dead, Fyodor Dostoevsky