My mistress has come home; at last I've seen her. Now I'm ready to die.

I swear fearfully at the conventions of the stage.

Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.

In Moscow you sit in a huge room at a restaurant; you know no one and no one knows you, and at the same time you don't feel a stranger. But here you know everyone and everyone knows you, and yet you are a stranger - a stranger... A stranger, and lonely...

Dear and most respected bookcase! I welcome your existence, which has for over one hundred years been devoted to the radiant ideals of goodness and justice.

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

My love is like a stone tied round my neck; it's dragging me down to the bottom; but I love my stone. I can't live without it.