Fyodor Dostoyevsky

"But how could you live and have no story to tell?"

"Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being."

"You see I kept asking myself then: why am I so stupid that if others are stupid—and I know they are—yet I won't be wiser?"

"The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence."

"But I always liked side-paths, little dark back-alleys behind the main road- there one finds adventures and surprises, and precious metal in the dirt."

"It's just the same story as a doctor once told me," observed the elder. "He was a man getting on in years, and undoubtedly clever. He spoke as frankly as you, though in jest, in bitter jest. 'I love h…"

"I have never in my life met a man like him for noble simplicity, and boundless truthfulness. I understood from the way he talked that anyone who chose could deceive him, and that he would forgive anyo…"

"The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half."