“I want to get to know you once for all, and I want you to know me. And then say good-bye. I believe it's always best to get to know people just before leaving them. I've noticed how you've been looking at me. There has been a continual look of expectation in your eyes, and I can't endure that. That's how it is I've kept away from you. But in the end I've learned to respect you. You do stand firm, don't you? I like people who are firm like that whatever it is they stand by. Your expectant eyes ceased to annoy me, I grew fond of them in the end, those expectant eyes. I understand something in you and you seem to love me for some reason.”
More from Fyodor Dostoyevsky
“I am too young and I’ve loved you too much.”
“Yet in their absence I seemed to love them so much.”
“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”
“Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering.”