May Sarton, Journal Of A Solitude

“Compassion was the most important, perhaps the sole law of human existence.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

seeing that dostoyevsky quote circulated as a tumblr deep quote that’s like “your worst sin is you have destroyed yourself for nothing” or whatever annoys me to no end bc 1) context is raskolnikov telling sonya that her trauma of being forced into prostitution to keep her family from starving is worth nothing because she will never save them which is kind of a thesis the book disproves over and over again as its main theme and 2) that’s rich coming from someone who axe murdered two women because he didn’t leave the house for a few weeks and came up with a theory that said it was ok actually

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating.”

— Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

“They were only speaking the part of god that they themselves could glimpse. And this truth was only as small as they themselves were small.”

— Lauren Groff, The Vaster Wilds

Russian Literature

Oh, Canada (2024)

“And so I ask myself: 'Where are your dreams?' And I shake my head and mutter: 'How the years go by!' And I ask myself again: 'What have you done with those years? Where have you buried your best moments? Have you really lived? Look,' I say to myself, 'how cold it is becoming all over the world!' And more years will pass and behind them will creep grim isolation. Tottering senility will come hobbling, leaning on a crutch, and behind these will come unrelieved boredom and despair. The world of fancies will fade, dreams will wilt and die and fall like autumn leaves from the trees. . . .” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

Franny Choi, from “Catastrophe is Next to Godliness”