- Ivan Turgenev

May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude

Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

I'm not sure if I dreamt it, thought it up, or just read it somewhere.

But I had this notion that some of us can relate to the moon more than we'd think and not for the typical reasons like loneliness and such, but for wanting a self.

The moon... Half of it is hidden, and the other half can only be seen by the reflection of the sun's light, not its own. Even this is controlled by other entities, i.e. the sun and the earth. The moon cannot even control how much of it will be visible and how much hidden and not even when. The moon exists by other entities' rules. The moon is wanting a self and agency. Perhaps that's where the notion of its loneliness comes from. We see the moon as beautiful and divine. Some even used to pray to it. What we don't see is what's behind that beauty. The moon is lonely in its suffering.

people will clown on me for this because he killed two people but I just love how sweet Rodya is. He is so cruel and mean and uncouth a lot or even most of the time, but then he does things like constantly thoughtlessly give the last of his money away to anyone who needs it more than him, cries when he’s in his psychotic episode and can’t remember who Razumikhin is, has that very sweet and tender moment with Polenka, begs the police to get a doctor for Marmeladov and says he’ll pay for it despite having nothing at all himself. At the same time he is capable of terrible things and is often terrible specifically to the people who love him and want to help, and oscillates wildly between the two. It’s that juxtaposition that holds so much of the interest of the narrative itself for me. A lot of people focus on how awful he is and while that is also honestly such a fun part of his character, that alone is not what makes him compelling to me. I have so much tenderness for his character despite what he’s done because he is just so mentally ill and has been through and been witness to so much hardship. He is not easy to love or understand but it’s so beautiful and sweet that Razumikhin, Sonya, his family and his other friends love him so dearly anyway. I truly think the suffering he is constantly surrounded by is the thing that has driven him to psychosis. Specifically I think of when he goes to the police station in part two and says he has been “shattered by poverty.” In these little moments of sweetness and lucidity towards others, even in the depths of his illness, we can still see the little boy in him who so desperately wanted to help that poor horse.

Quotes by Sylvia Plath, The Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and they will come forth, later, in uglier ways.”

— Sigmund Freud

Katherine Mansfield, in a letter to Dorothy Brett, dated 14 August 1918

Lidia Yuknavitch, from Reading the Waves: A Memoir published in 2025