Zoe

“And you grieve that the momentary beauty has faded so soon never to return, that it flashed upon you so treacherously, so vainly, grieve because you had not even time to love
her.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights and Other Stories: Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Classics, Short Stories, Literature) [Annotated]

“I would love you, I would love you so, that even if you still loved him, even if you went on loving the man I don’t know, you would never feel that my love was a burden to you. You would only feel every minute that at your side was beating a grateful, grateful heart, a warm heart ready for your sake.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights

“And I do nothing but dream every day that at last I shall meet some one. Oh, if only you knew how often I have been in love in that way...." "How? With whom?..." "Why, with no one, with an ideal, with the one I dream of in my sleep.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights and Other Stories: The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Volume X

“Do you know that, maybe, I shall leave off
grieving over the crime and sin of my life? for such a life is a crime and a sin. And do not imagine that I have
been exaggerating anything—for goodness’ sake don't
think that, Nastenka: for at times such misery comes
over me, such misery.... Because it begins to seem to me at such times that I am incapable of beginning a life in real life, because it has seemed to me that I have lost all touch, all instinct for the actual, the real; because at last I have cursed myself; because after my fantastic nights I have moments of returning sobriety, which are awful!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky