“It was not the old woman I killed, it was myself I killed. I smashed myself once and for all.”Feodor Dostoievski · Crimă și pedeapsă · 1866 · Partea V, capitolul 4
The substance of the line is universal: any grave act does not only kill outwardly, it also kills the old self of the doer. The mechanism is that our identity is built from what we do; once you violate something essential, you cannot return to the person you were. Raskolnikov wanted to prove a theory, but the theory consumed him: he is condemned to a single, forever. A person who betrays friends for a career discovers they lost not just friends but the ability to respect themselves.
Why it matters The line says something essential about responsibility: our deeds change us more deeply than they change the world.