I think that he also did not sleep and we both lay there in the dark, thinking, I suppose, of the same thing.
I thought even of myself, my sense of humour has never been very strong, but I can at any rate see that I am no very fine figure in life, and that whether such a man as I live or die can be of no great importance to any one or anything, but I do most truly desire not to make more of the matter than is just.

A man may have felt himself the most insignificant and useless of human creatures all his days, but face him with death and he becomes, by very force of the contrast, something of a figure.
Here am I, deprived of the only thing in life that gave me joy or pride.

I should, after that deprivation, have slipped back, I suppose, to my old life of hopeless uninterest and insignificance, but now here the death of Marie Ivanovna has been no check at all.

I half believe now that one can do with life or death what one will.

If I had known that from the beginning what things I might have found! As it is, I must simply make the best of it.