‘Life is a gift, life is happiness, each minute might have been an age of happiness. Si jeunesse savait! Now, changing my life, I am being reborn into a new form. Brother!
Brother[Dostojevsky]
[In this letter of 22 December 1849, Fyodor Dostoevsky, author of The Brothers Karamazov, tells his brother Mikhail how his near-execution has changed his life. The terrible event made him realise how wonderful and precious life is – something he had never truly appreciated before.]