I have no will of my own. Never did. Limp and lily-livered, I always obey - is it possible that's attractive to women?

When asked, "Why do you always wear black?", he said, "I am mourning for my life.

We are accustomed to live in hopes of good weather, a good harvest, a nice love-affair, hopes of becoming rich or getting the office of chief of police, but I've never noticed anyone hoping to get wiser. We say to ourselves: it'll be better under a new tsar, and in two hundred years it'll still be better, and nobody tries to make this good time come tomorrow. On the whole, life gets more and more complex every day and moves on its own sweet will, and people get more and more stupid, and get isolated from life in ever-increasing numbers.

In descriptions of nature one must seize on small details, grouping them so that when the reader closes his eyes he gets a picture.

It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense. Only fools and charlatans think they know and understand everything. The stupider they are, the wider they conceive their horizons to be. And if an artist decides to declare that he understands nothing of what he sees - this in itself constitutes a considerable clarity in the realm of thought, and a great step forward.

There ought to be a man with a hammer behind the door of every happy man.

Man will become better when you show him what he is like.