In 'A Confession,' Tolstoy found meaning that he could hold on to, and he lived for another 30 years.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Tolstoy may not be showing that much of Russia at that time even. It's hard to tell. You tend to associate the quality of the period with what's lasted - what's still good. And that quality becomes the whole period.
There are two men in Tolstoy. He is a mystic and he is also a realist. He is addicted to the practice of a pietism that for all its sincerity is nothing if not vague and sentimental; and he is the most acute and dispassionate of observers, the most profound and earnest student of character and emotion.
What Tolstoy is on about is that carnal love is not a good idea.
Everyone writes in Tolstoy's shadow, whether one feels oneself to be Tolstoyan or not.
I'm never going to be Tolstoy.
When I bought a collection of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, I returned home with a bright enthusiasm to begin the long march into the Russian soul. Though I've failed to read either man to completion, they both helped me to imagine that my fictional South Carolina was as vast a literary acreage as their Russia.
A man can look upon his life and accept it as good or evil; it is far, far harder for him to confess that it has been unimportant in the sum of things.
I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century.
This is not Tolstoy. I don't want to know what critics and professors think of what I'm writing. It might hurt my feelings.
When I was in prison, I was wrapped up in all those deep books. That Tolstoy crap - people shouldn't read that stuff.