The Gambler Quotes

“O da bütün bunları çok iyi biliyordu; benim için erişilmez oluşundan, ona dair tüm hayallerimin imkansızlığı düşüncesinden de muazzam bir keyif aldığına kalıbımı basarım; aksi takdirde onun gibi temkinli ve akıllı bir kadın bana karşı bu kadar samimi, açık davranır mıydı? Sanırım bu zamana dek bana bir antikçağ imparatoriçesinin yanında soyunabileceği, insan yerine koymadığı kölesi gibi davrandı. Evet, pek çok kez beni insan yerine bile koymadı.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Kumarbaz

“Like his Russian contemporary Dostoevsky — who wrote his entire novel ‘The Gambler’ in three weeks to pay off desperate gambling debts — Mendeleev threw together his first table to meet a textbook publisher’s deadline.”
― Sam Kean, The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements

“jouer, c'est tenter le diable, c'est aussi tenter Dieu.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevski

“Yes, she's rather good-looking; I think she's good-looking. After all, she drives other men out of their mind. She's tall and svelte. Only she's very thin. I think you could tie her in a knot or bend her double.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Gambler and A Nasty Business

“Words, words, words. Whereas one needs deeds!”
― Dostoyevsky (Author)

“Of my own fortunes, interested though I was in the affair, I took no account. I was in the strange position of possessing but two hundred gülden, of being at a loose end, of lacking both a post, the means of subsistence, a shred of hope, and any plans for the future, yet of caring nothing for these things. Had not my mind been so full of Polina, I should have given myself up to the comical piquancy of the impending denouement, and laughed my fill at it. But the thought of Polina was torture to me. That her fate was settled I already had an inkling; yet that was not the thought which was giving me so much uneasiness. What I really wished for was to penetrate her secrets. I wanted her to come to me and say, "I love you," and, if she would not so come, or if to hope that she would ever do so was an unthinkable absurdity-why, then there was nothing else for me to want. Even now I do not know what I am wanting. I feel like a man who has lost his way. I yearn but to be in her presence, and within the circle of her light and splendour-to be there now, and forever, and for the whole of my life. More I do not know. How can I ever bring myself to leave her?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky