26 September, 1880 Leo Tolstoy In His Letter To Nikolai Strakhov

“I mistrust illuminations: what we take for a discovery is very often only a familiar thought that we have not recognized.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre, Saint Genet

Lidia Yuknavitch, from Reading the Waves: A Memoir published in 2025

people will clown on me for this because he killed two people but I just love how sweet Rodya is. He is so cruel and mean and uncouth a lot or even most of the time, but then he does things like constantly thoughtlessly give the last of his money away to anyone who needs it more than him, cries when he’s in his psychotic episode and can’t remember who Razumikhin is, has that very sweet and tender moment with Polenka, begs the police to get a doctor for Marmeladov and says he’ll pay for it despite having nothing at all himself. At the same time he is capable of terrible things and is often terrible specifically to the people who love him and want to help, and oscillates wildly between the two. It’s that juxtaposition that holds so much of the interest of the narrative itself for me. A lot of people focus on how awful he is and while that is also honestly such a fun part of his character, that alone is not what makes him compelling to me. I have so much tenderness for his character despite what he’s done because he is just so mentally ill and has been through and been witness to so much hardship. He is not easy to love or understand but it’s so beautiful and sweet that Razumikhin, Sonya, his family and his other friends love him so dearly anyway. I truly think the suffering he is constantly surrounded by is the thing that has driven him to psychosis. Specifically I think of when he goes to the police station in part two and says he has been “shattered by poverty.” In these little moments of sweetness and lucidity towards others, even in the depths of his illness, we can still see the little boy in him who so desperately wanted to help that poor horse.

I’ll never not sob over these 2 shots.

— October 16, 1921 / Franz Kafka diaries

–Beau Taplin

I am not meant for casual love. I was born for soul consuming love and obsession.

Fyodor Dostoevsky //Jean-Paul Sartre

“You may think: What’s happened? Good God, are they kidding? But it is a rule of life, alas, that nobody is kidding.”

— Andrew Sean Greer, Less Is Lost

poetry is wild because in any given collection 30% of it will make you feel nothing, 60% will make you feel varying levels of confused and curious, and the other 10% will crack open your brain like an egg and reveal new truths about the human condition