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“… we may have a sigh of relief at the thought that it is nevertheless vouchsafed to a few to salvage without effort from the whirlpool of their emotions the deepest truths towards which the rest of us have to find our way through tormenting uncertainty and with restless groping.”
“Imaginative writers are valuable colleagues … In the knowledge of the human heart they are far ahead of us common folk because they draw on resources that we have not yet made accessible to science.”
The first Dostoevsky novel I ever read was Notes from Underground. I was fascinated by the power of Dostoevsky's language, his imagery, and his penetrating insights into the life of his characters—some of which I took to be into his own inner life, as he spoke in the first person singular. By directly addressing the reader, he drew me inside his narrative. Through this experience Dostoevsky enticed me to read everything he wrote in chronological order.1 Reading his literary output in sequence deepened my appreciation of his craft as a novelist.
There are a number of reasons that I have sustained my interest in Dostoevsky's writings. In the first place, I became aware of the fact that in each of his short stories and novels his descriptions indicated a deepening understanding of the psychology of his characters. I was particularly interested in the fact that he, just as my patients, never changed the subject.2