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.

People tend to think of their lives as having a dramatic arc, because they read too much fiction.

Lust was a positive high-tension cable, plugged into my core, activating a near-epileptic seizure of conviction that this was the one thing I had to do in life.

A creative life cannot be sustained by approval, any more than it can be destroyed by criticism.

If you believe something, you can have a morality that means something as well. You can feel recognized as an individual within the universe; it can give meaning to who you are.

The great liberty of the fictional writer is to let the imagination out of the traces and see it gallop off over the horizon.

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