If I had listened to the critics I'd have died drunk in the gutter

You don't understand, you fool' says Yegor, looking dreamily up at the sky. 'You've never understood what kind of person I am, nor will you in a million years... You just think I'm a mad person who has thrown his life away... Once the free spirit has taken hold of a man, there's no way of getting it out of him.

Those who come a hundred or two hundred years after us will despise us for having lived our lives so stupidly and tastelessly. Perhaps they'll find a means to be happy.

Even while lying, you'll be believed if you speak with authority.

It is the writer's business not to accuse and not to prosecute, but to champion the guilty, once they are condemned and suffer punishment.

If our life has a meaning, an aim, it has nothing to do with our personal happiness, but something wiser and greater.

Write only of what is important and eternal.