“Actually, I am asking myself if conversations with friends always feel like this--two minds bound together by their focus on the same subject.”

“There is a question I have learned to ask myself when I am feeling bothered about others: am I holding myself to the same standard I am demanding of them?”

“I and me are always too deeply in conversation: how could I endure it,if there were not a friend?The friend of the hermit is always the third one: the third one is the float which prevents the conversation of the two from sinking into the depth.”

“Not so much two ships passing in the night as two ships sailing together for a time but always bound for different ports.”

“I feel like I am always the one tearing everything up and forever sewing it back together.”

“…have you noticed, Rodion Romanovitch, that in our Petersburg circles, if two clever men meet who are not intimate, but respect each other, like you and me, it takes them half an hour before they can find a subject for conversation – they are dumb, they sit opposite each other and feel awkward? Everyone has subjects of conversation, ladies for instance…people in high society always have their subjects of conversation, c’est de rigueur; but people of the middle sort like us, thinking people that is, are always tongue-tied and awkward. What is the reason of it? Whether it is the lack of public interest, or whether it is we are so honest we don’t want to deceive one another, I don’t know. What do you think?”