When Dostoevsky met Dickens in 1862 — a meeting that is hard to imagine — Dickens explained that there were two people inside him, ‘one who feels as he ought to feel and one who feels the opposite.’ […] Out of these two people he constructed his universe of characters, good and evil. Dostoevsky’s comment is laconic and ambiguous. ‘Only two people?’ he asked.
Verlyn Klinkenborg, “The Whirling Sound of Planet Dickens” (via fwriction)