" What seems most important is that Dostoevsky's near-death experience changed a typically vain and trendy young writer-a very talented writer, true, but still one whose basic concerns were for his own literary glory-into a person who believed deeply in moral/spiritual values...more, into someone who believed that a life lived without moral/spiritual values was not just incomplete but depraved. "

― David Foster Wallace , Consider the Lobster and Other Essays