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Crime and Punishment

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Crime and Punishment is a novel by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It was first published in the literary journal The Russian Messenger in twelve monthly installments during 1866. It is the second of Dostoyevsky's full-length novels following his return from 5 years of exile in Siberia and is considered the first great novel of his "mature" period of writing. The novel is often cited as one of the supreme achievements in literature.

Read more about Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Crime and Punishment
had been certain that all the progressives were fools like him, it
would not have allayed his uneasiness. All the doctrines, the ideas, the
systems, with which Andrey Semyonovitch pestered him had no interest for
him. He had his own object--he simply wanted to find out at once what
was happening _here_. Had these people any power or not? Had he anything
to fear from them? Would they expose any enterprise of his? And what
precisely was now the object of their attacks? Could he somehow make up
to them and get round them if they really were powerful? Was this the
thing to do or not? Couldnt he gain something through them? In fact
hundreds of questions presented themselves.

Andrey Semyonovitch was an anæmic, scrofulous little man, with strangely
flaxen mutton-chop whiskers of which he was very proud. He was a clerk
and had almost always something wrong with his eyes. He was rather
soft-hearted, but self-confident and sometimes extremely conceited in
speech, which had an absurd effect, incongruous with his little figure.
He was one of the lodgers most respected by Amalia Ivanovna, for he did
not get drunk and paid regularly for his lodgings. Andrey Semyonovitch
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Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words.

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– Gustave Flaubert

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More on this topic:

"Imitate then innovate", an article by David Perell