I exist. In thousands of agonies—I exist. I’m tormented on the rack—but I exist! Though I sit alone in a pillar—I exist! I see the sun, and if I don’t see it, I know it’s there. And there’s a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there. ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“Allow me to give you some advice from the heart: don’t give up art, and even give yourself over to it even more. To live alone may well make your life too drear for endurance. There is but one cure, one refuge, for that woe: art, creative activity.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1880
“But you are a great sinner, that’s true,” he added almost solemnly, and your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing. Isn’t that fearful? Isn’t it fearful that you are living in this filth which you loathe so, and at the same time you know yourself (you’ve only to open your eyes) that you are not helping anyone by it, not saving anyone from anything?” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
And one may choose what is contrary to one’s own interests and sometimes one positively ought… One’s own free unfettered choice, one’s own caprice, however wild it may be, one’s own fancy worked up at times to frenzy… What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead. – Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground