Dostoevski said once, “There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.”

For the mystery of man’s being is not only in living, but in what one lives for. Without a firm idea of what he lives for, man will not consent to live and will sooner destroy himself than remain on earth, even if there is bread all around him.

We pursue callings that take us nowhere and permit ourselves to be controlled by compulsions that we cannot understand (or are not aware of) and whose outcomes serve only to keep us caged, unconscious and going nowhere.

For the secret of human existence lies not only in living, but in knowing what to live for. Without a firm conviction of the purpose of living, man will not consent to live and will destroy himself rather than remain on earth, though he be surrounded by bread.

Dostoevsky’s heroes ‘feel deeply because they think deeply; they suffer endlessly because they were endlessly deliberative; they dare to will because they have dared to think’.

It is a terrible and terrifying thing to know what you want to be and then realize you’re the only one standing in your way—to want with every fiber of your soul to be someone different, to escape the “you” you’ve made of yourself, only to fall back into the self you hate, over and over and over again.