He was wearing an old and hopelessly ragged black dress coat, with all its buttons missing except one, and that one he had buttoned, evidently clinging to this last trace of respectability.'
(...)
'Excuse me, young man, has it ever happened to you . . . hm . . . well, to petition hopelessly for a loan?'
'Yes, it has. But what do you mean by "hopelessly"?'
'Hopelessly in the fullest sense, when you know beforehand that you will get nothing by it.'
(...)
'Why do you go?' put in Raskolnikov.
'Well, when one has no alternative, there is nowhere else one can go! For every man must have somewhere to go. Since there are times when one absolutely must go somewhere!
