T3781

Southern Reach Series by Jeff Vandermeer

(via TO-DAY – HILOBROW)

In 1849, Dostoevsky was standing in front of a firing squad. He was lined up with fourteen other men, divided into groups of three, waiting to be shot. The first group was already in position when a cart arrived with a letter from the Tsar commuting the sentence at the last moment.

When he returned to his cell, he wrote a letter to his brother, and it's one of the most honest things ever put on paper. He didn't write about injustice or politics or the men who put him there. He wrote about all the time he'd wasted, all the moments he let slip past him without appreciating what they actually were. He wrote about how little he'd lived even though he'd been alive the whole time.