I think it's a misreading of Dostoevsky to think of him as a programmatic theist. He's actually much closer to someone like William James. He's actually a pragmatist.

The fictional work is a kind of actor that wears a satirical garb but can put on other costumes as well.

The novelist, quite rightly, fears the psychoanalyst as both an enemy and a usurper.

It is not that sport, over-indulged in, coarsens the mind; it is that it dulls it.

Always carry a notebook. And I mean always.

Is there anything more useless than a crouton? I sometimes wake up in the small hours with a start and realise that what's roused me is an overpowering urge to visit violence on its originator.

Certainly, for time out of mind, an obsessive dwelling on happier former days has been synonymous with getting older, while it was the juvenescent who rushed with open arms to embrace the future.