“His unrivaled genius as an ideological novelist was this capacity to invent actions and situations in which ideas dominate behavior without the latter becoming allegorical. He possessed what I call an eschatological imagination, one that could envision putting ideas into action and then following them out to their ultimate consequences. At the same time, his characters respond to such consequences according to the ordinary moral and social standards prevalent in their milieu, and it is the fusion of these two levels that provides Dostoevsky's novels with both their imaginative range and their realistic grounding in social life.”

“The alienated audiences was one that was aware of the performance as an arbitrary construction of the real, of the difference between players and characters, and was therefore aware that the people and incidents on stage were there to perform social an ideological actions that could only be understood in terms of their relationship to the dominant ideology. Alienation produced a thinking, interrogative socially aware audience.”

“When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.”

“Ideas have enormous consequences in a person's life because you ultimately become what you believe.”

“That is the definition of a true murderer. One that considers his actions, has the mental capacity to understand the consequences, and chooses to kill.”

“She is a tyrant much in the way of a bad novelist, who shapes his characters according to his own ideology or desires and never allows them the space to become themselves.”