Smerdyakov

“What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing unhappy beings into the world!”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“There is a much that a man should not see, should not know, and if he should see it, it is better for him to die.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolymskie rasskazy

“The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they just withdraw and after a short interval break out again all the more terribly; and gather inside us and are life, are life that is unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

“The truth is always an abyss. One must — as in a swimming pool — dare to dive from the quivering springboard of trivial everyday experience and sink into the depths, in order to later rise again — laughing and fighting for breath — to the now doubly illuminated surface of things.”
― Franz Kafka