Everything I have written up to now is trifling compared to that which I would like to write and would write with great pleasureEither I am a fool and a self-conceited person, or I am a being capable of becoming a good writer; I am displeased and bored with everything now being written, while everything in my head interests, moves, and excites me-whence I draw the conclusion that no one is doing what is needed, and I alone know the secret of how it should be done. In all likelihood everyone who writes thinks that. In fact, the devil himself will be brought to his knees by these questions.

When men ask me how I know so much about men, they get a simple answer: everything I know about men, I learned from me.

I promise to be a splendid husband, but give me a wife who, like the moon, won't in my sky every day...

In all my life I never met anyone so frivolous as you two, so crazy and unbusinesslike. I tell you in plain Russian your property is going to be sold and you don't seem to understand what I say.

The time has come for writers, especially those who are artists, to admit that in this world one cannot make anything out, just as Socrates once admitted it, just as Voltaire admitted it.

If one wants to lead a good life, A HUMAN LIFE, one must work.

If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.