Crime and Punishment - I'm about 3/4 done.

“Or renounce life altogether!” he suddenly cried out in frenzy. “Accept fate obediently as it is, once and for all, and stifle everything in myself, renouncing any right to act, to live, to love! Do you understand, do you understand, my dear sir, what it means when there is no longer anywhere to go?” he suddenly recalled Marmeladov’s question yesterday. “For it is necessary that every man have at least somewhere to go …”

It had not occurred to him as he was going upstairs to Razumikhin’s that he would therefore have to come face-to-face with him. But now, in an instant, he realized from his earlier experience that he was least of all disposed at that moment to come face-to-face with anyone in the whole world, whoever it might be.

You see, I don’t have any lessons either, and to hell with it, but there’s a bookseller in the flea market named Cherubimov, and he’s a sort of lesson in himself.

We have to make a human being out of you, after all.

An economic idea is not yet an invitation to murder.

“Do you like street singing?” Raskolnikov suddenly addressed one not too young passer-by, who had been standing with him near the barrel-organ and looked like an idler. The man stared at him wildly and with amazement. “I do,” Raskolnikov went on, looking as if he were not talking about street singing at all, “I like hearing songs to the barrel-organ on a cold, dark, and wet autumn evening—it must be a wet evening—when all the passers-by have pale green, sickly faces; or, even better, when wet snow is falling, straight down, with no wind—you know?—and the gaslights are shining through it …”

He went down slowly, unhurriedly, all in a fever, and filled, though he was not aware of it, with the new, boundless sensation of a sudden influx of full and powerful life. This sensation might be likened to the sensation of a man condemned to death who is suddenly and unexpectedly granted a pardon.

“Polechka, my name is Rodion; pray for me, too, sometimes: ‘and for the servant of God, Rodion’—that’s all.” “I’ll pray for you all the rest of my life,” the girl said ardently, and suddenly laughed again, rushed to him, and again held him hard.

It sucks you in, it’s the end of the world, an anchor, a quiet haven, the navel of the earth, the three-fish foundation of the world, the essence of pancakes, rich meat pies, evening samovars, soft sighs and warm vests, heated beds on the stove—well, just as if you died and were alive at the same time, both benefits at once!

“That’s what I love him for!” whispered Razumikhin, who exaggerated everything, turning energetically on his chair. “These sudden gestures of his!…”

There was something tense in this whole conversation, and in the silence, and in the reconciliation, and in the forgiveness, and everyone felt it.

Again it suddenly became perfectly plain and clear to him that he had just uttered a terrible lie, that not only would he never have the chance to talk all he wanted, but that it was no longer possible for him to talk at all, with anyone, about anything, ever.

Why do you demand a heroism of me that you may not even have in yourself? That is despotism; that is coercion!

It’s the same outside as in a closed room.

Never, never had she felt anything like this. A whole new world had descended vaguely and mysteriously into her soul.

I left you yesterday at the most interesting point. Who won?” “No one, naturally. We got on to the eternal questions, and it all stayed in the clouds.” “Just imagine what they got on to yesterday, Rodya: is there such a thing as crime, or not? He said they all lied themselves into the blue devils.”

“And what if one reasons like this (come, help me now): ‘Ghosts are, so to speak, bits and pieces of other worlds, their beginnings. The healthy man, naturally, has no call to see them, because the healthy man is the most earthly of men, and therefore he ought to live according to life here, for the sake of completeness and order. Well, but as soon as a man gets sick, as soon as the normal earthly order of his organism is disrupted, the possibility of another world at once begins to make itself known, and the sicker one is, the greater the contact with this other world, so that when a man dies altogether, he goes to the other world directly.’ I’ve been reasoning it out for a long time. If one believes in a future life, one can believe in this reasoning.” “I do not believe in a future life,” said Raskolnikov.

For a minute they looked silently at each other. Razumikhin remembered that minute all his life. Raskolnikov’s burning and fixed look seemed to grow more intense every moment, penetrating his soul, his consciousness.

She stood before him in reality.

The murderer and the harlot strangely come together over the reading of the eternal book.

“Accept suffering and redeem yourself by it, that’s what you must do.”