“An artist must know the reality he is depicting in its minutest detail. In my opinion we have only one shining example of that - Count Leo Tolstoy.”

“Listen, in dreams and especially in nightmares, from indigestion or anything, a man sees sometimes such artistic visions, such complex and real actuality, such events, even a whole world of events, woven into such a plot, with such unexpected details from the most exalted matters to the last button on a cuff, as I swear Leo Tolstoy has never invented.”

“Do you know, to my thinking it's a good thing sometimes to be absurd; it's better in fact, it makes it easier to forgive one another, it's easier to be humble. One can't understand everything at once, we can't begin with perfection all at once! In order to reach perfection one must begin by being ignorant of a great deal. And if we understand things too quickly, perhaps we shan't understand them thoroughly.”

“Dreams appear much more prominent and clear when the dreamer is in an unhealthy state - they have an extraordinary semblance of reality. Most monstrous pictures are put together but all the circumstances are so subtly interwoven the details so artistically harmonious in every minute respect as to defy human imitation. Such morbid dreams are always recollected for very long and produce strong impressions on the disordered and already excited organs of the dreamer.”

“In a morbid condition, dreams are often distinguished by their remarkably graphic, vivid, and extremely lifelike quality. The resulting picture is sometimes monstrous, but the setting and the whole process of the presentation sometimes happen to be so probable, and with details so subtle, unexpected, yet artistically consistent with the whole fullness of the picture, that even the dreamer himself would be unable to invent them in reality, though he were as much an artist as Pushkin or Turgenev. Such dreams, morbid dreams, are always long remembered and produce a strong impression on the disturbed and already excited organism of the person.Raskolnikov had a terrible dream.”

“As for my personal opinion, to love only prosperity is even somehow unseemly. Whether it's a good thing or a bad thing, smashing something is occasionally very pleasant too.”

“But what are years, what are months!" he would exclaim. "Why count the days, when even one day is enough for man to know all happiness.”