Related Excerpts

He was a terribly nervous and sensitive young man. 

He was thin, short and blond; his face had an 

unhealthy pallor; his small, grey eyes moved anxiously  

from one object to another, and his pale lips 

trembled nervously.

Avdotiya Panayeva, Memoirs

At 12 p.m. sharp, that is, exactly on Christmas, I put my chains on my legs for the first time, they weighed about 10 pounds, and it was very uncomfortable to walk with them. They put us into open sleighs, separately; everyone was accompanied by a police officer, and in a caravan of four sledges, with the postal officer in front, we departed from St. Petersburg. I had a heavy feeling in my heart.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky in a letter to his brother

On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in 

S. Lane and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. Bridge. 

Opening line of Crime and Punishment.

The Fyodor Dostoyevsky Museum (right) is in a building where once the writer lived and wrote, on the corner of Kuznechy pereulok and Dostoyevsky ulitsa. It includes rooms dedicated to Dostoyevsky’s life and to his major novels; there is also a map on the wall showing the many places that the writer lived in the city, as well as locations from his novels. Above, Dostoyevsky in 1860, just after he returned to St. Petersburg from Siberian exile.

Provided you are reasonable and have a head made of marble, cool and superhumanly cautious, there is not the slightest doubt that you can win anything you wish. And so I shall expend great effort to think and keep control...

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in a letter to his wife.

Dostoyevsky was a great writer, first turn due to his striking ability to sink very deep into the abyss of evil in each of his works. At the same time, in each of his works, his characters managed to defeat that evil. From the depth of the evil, they all strove for an ideal.” 

Boris Tikhomirov, head of research at St. Petersburg’s 

Dostoyevsky Museum