Frankly, if there ever was a time when I was really happy, it wasn’t during those first intoxicating moments of my success, but long before that, when I hadn’t yet read or shown my manuscript to anyone — during those long nights of ecstatic hopes and dreams and passionate love of my work, when I had grown attached to my vision, to the characters I had created myself, as though they were my own offspring, as though they really existed — and I loved, rejoiced and grieved over them, at times even shedding quite genuine tears over my guileless hero.

Frankly, if there ever was a time when I was really happy, it wasn’t during those first intoxicating moments of my success, but long before that, when I hadn’t yet read or shown my manuscript to anyone — during those long nights of ecstatic hopes and dreams and passionate love of my work, when I had grown attached to my vision, to the characters I had created myself, as though they were my own offspring, as though they really existed — and I loved, rejoiced and grieved over them, at times even shedding quite genuine tears over my guileless hero.

– Fyodor Dostoyevsky –

The Insulted and Humiliated

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