“Is this what is called remorse of conscience or repentance? I do not know, and I cannot tell to this day. Perhaps this remembrance even now contains something pleasurable for my passions. No--what is unbearable to me is only this image alone, and precisely on the threshold, with its raised and threatening little fist, only that look alone, only that minute alone, only that shaking head. This is what I cannot bear, because since then it appears to me almost every day. It does not appear on its own, but I myself evoke it, and cannot help evoking it, even though I cannot live with it.”

“I suspect gentlemen, that you're regarding me with pity; you keep repeating to me that an enlightened and cultured man -- such as, in short, as the man of the future will be -- cannot knowingly desire anything unprofitable for himself -- that that's mathematics. I agree totally that it really is mathematics. But I repeat to you for the hundredth time: there is only one case, only one, when a man can intentionally and consciously desire for himself even what is harmful and stupid, even what is extremely stupid: namely, in order to have the right to desire for himself even what is extremely stupid and not be constrained by the obligation to desire for himself only what is intelligent.”

“I am a wicked man... But do you know, gentlemen, what was the main point about my wickedness? The whole thing, precisely was, the greatest nastiness precisely lay in my being shamefully conscious every moment, even in moments of the greatest bile, that I was not only not a wicked man but was not even an embittered man, that I was simply frightening sparrows in vain, and pleasing myself with it.”

“My friend, I've been lying all my life. Even when I was telling the truth. I never spoke for the truth, but only for myself, I knew that before, but only now do I see...Oh, where are those friends whom I have insulted with my friendship all my life? And everyone, everyone! Savez-vous, perhaps I'm lying now; certainly I'm also lying now. The worst of it is that I believe myself when I lie. The most difficult thing in life is to live and not lie...and...and not believe one's own lie, yes, yes, that's precisely it!”

“And I fancy, besides, that we seem like such different people ... through various circumstances, that we cannot perhaps have many points in common. But yet I don't believe in that last idea myself, for it often only seems that there are no points in common, when there really are some ... it's just laziness that makes people classify themselves according to appearances, and fail to find anything in common.... But perhaps I am boring you? You seem ...”

“I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, 'I exist.' In thousands of agonies -- I exist. I'm tormented on the rack -- but I exist! Though I sit alone in a pillar -- I exist! I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there.”

“All my life I did not want it to be only words. This is why I lived, because I kept not wanting it. And now, too, every day I want it not to be words.”