‘I want to attempt a thing like that and I am frightened by these trifles’, he thought with an odd smile. ’Hm…yes. all is in a man’s hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that’s an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most…But I am talking too much. It’s because I chatter and do nothing. Or perhaps it is that I chatter because I do nothing. I’ve learned to chatter this month, lying for days in my den thinking…of Jack the Giantkiller. Why am I going there now. Am I capable of that? Is that serious. It is not serious at all. It’s simply a fantasy to amuse myself; a plaything? Yes, maybe it’s a plaything.’
Fyodor Dostoevsky, “Crime and Punishment”.
