Catharsis Quote by Mikhail Bakhtin

Every one of his characters has their own idea, their own thing they want to express. Dostoevsky just lets them do it.

— Svetlana Alexievich

“In the nouveau roman of Robbe-Grillet there is an attempt at a more or less Copernican change in the relation between the paradigm and…

— Frank Kermode

So great is the worth of Dostoevsky that to have produced him is by itself sufficient justification for the existence of the Russian people…

— Nikolai Berdyaev

“His unrivaled genius as an ideological novelist was this capacity to invent actions and situations in which ideas dominate behavior without the latter becoming…

— Joseph Frank

“Dostoevsky does not believe his own words, and he is trying to replace a lack of faith with "feeling" and eloquence.”

— Lev Shestov

“I'm no Dostoevsky - I just love to write”

— Ian Colquhoun

“All of Dostoevsky’s heroes question themselves as to the meaning of life. In this they are modern: they do not fear ridicule. What distinguishes…

— Albert Camus

Of all my films, people wrote to me most about this one... ...I had wanted to make The Idiot long before Rashomon. Since I…

— Akira Kurosawa

“But Dostoevsky does allow himself to ask just this very question: whether our reason has any right to judge between the possible and the…

— Lev Shestov

You are not Dostoevsky,' said the woman... 'You never can tell...' he answered. 'Dostoevsky is dead,' the woman said, a bit uncertainly. 'I protest!'…

— Mikhail Bulgakov

“Dostoevsky's nature was two-fold, like Spinoza's, and like that of nearly all those who try to awaken humanity from its torpor.”

— Lev Shestov

Dostoevsky is such a bad writer it is hard to take him seriously as a novelist, though he is a wonderful philosopher.

— John Banville