“The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.” -- Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
It occurs to me, Mr. Dostoyevsky sir, that maybe this is the reason writers lock themselves away, creating for endless hours a world of their own making, turning imagined universals into expressions of singularity by the creation of characters and specific events, through which readers, in their individuality, will recognize some of these features and thereby, tap into their own pretensions of universality and singing brotherhood. And everyone can feel uniquely, wonderfully solitary and comfortingly connected to some grand scheme of human purpose and insight, all at the same time. Something like that.
