zoe olesker’s Reviews > Notes from Underground > Status Update

“besides: maybe i will indeed get relief from the writing. […] i believe for some reason that if i write it down, i shall then be rid of it. so why not try?
finally: i’m bored, and i constantly do nothing. and writing things down really seems like work. they say work makes a man good and honest. well, here’s a chance at least.”

“maybe it's also that i'm simply a coward. and maybe also that i'm purposely imagining a public before me so as to behave more decently while i write. there may be a thousand reasons.”

“i shall never have any readers. i have already declared as much… i do not want to hamper myself with anything in preparing my notes. i will not introduce any order or system. whatever i recall, i will write down”

“in every man's memories there are such things as he will reveal not to everyone, but perhaps only to friends. there are also such as he will reveal not even to friends, but only to himself, and that in secret. […] is it possible to be perfectly candid with oneself and not be afraid of the whole truth?”

“he senses that once he finds it, there will be nothing to search for”

“but man is a frivolous and unseemly being, and perhaps, similar to a chess player, likes only the process of achieving the goal, but not the goal itself.”

“man loves creating and the making of roads, that is indisputable. but why does he so passionately love destruction and chaos as well? tell me that! […] can it be that he has such a love of destruction and chaos (it's indisputable that he sometimes loves them very much; that is a fact) because he is instinctively afraid of achieving the goal and completing the edifice he is creating?”

“and you ask why i twisted and tormented myself so? answer: because it was just too boring to sit there with folded arms”

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“i made up adventures and devised a life for myself so as to live, at least somehow, a little”

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“pouring from empty into void”