“But Dostoevsky does allow himself to ask just this very question: whether our reason has any right to judge between the possible and the impossible.”

“Suffering "buys" something, and this something possesses a certain value for all of us, for common consciousness; by suffering we buy the right to judge.”

“If Darwin had seen in life what Dostoevsky saw, he would not have talked of the law of the preservation of species, but of its destruction.”

“St. Augustine hated the Stoics, Dostoevsky hated the Russian Liberals. At first sight this seems a quite inexplicable peculiarity. Both were convinced Christians, both spoke so much of love, and su...”

“I thought you were mad at me.""I am.""Well, I make it a rule never to have sex with anyone who's mad at me."He arched a brow. "It's a wonder you've ever had sex at all.”

“It is ridiculous - like a mad whirlwind... it's mad that I'm so famous.”

“Most men are within a finger's breadth of being mad.”

“There is something relentless about the serenity of nature which has a crushing effect on the human mind. The lavish splendour of her phases, which completely ignores human strife, fills the race o...”

“Almost every day I can feel myself suffering mainly in the head, I can explain the pain to myself but knowing it comes from an inflammation of my imagination doesn't prevent it being reality itself...”

“I guess in this culture of ever-shortening attention spans, it's good if a song can lift us out of the madness, even if only for a few minutes.”