If you want to work on your art, work on your life.

The unhappy are egotistical, base, unjust, cruel, and even less capable of understanding one another than are idiots. Unhappinessdoes not unite people, but separates them.

They say philosophers and wise men are indifferent. Wrong. Indifference is a paralysis of the soul, a premature death.

But if you had asked him what his work was, he would look candidly and openly at you with his large bright eyes through his gold pincenez, and would answer in a soft, velvety, lisping baritone: "My work is literature."

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.

Ivanov: Once I worked hard and thought a lot but I never got tired; now I do nothing and think of nothing, but I'm tired in body and spirit. My conscience aches day and night, I feel deeply guilty but I don't understand where I am actually at fault. And add to that my wife's illness, my lack of money, the constant bickering, gossip, unnecessary conversations, that stupid Borkin... My home has become loathsome to me and I find living there worse than torture.

I don’t understand anything about the ballet; all I know is that during the intervals the ballerinas stink like horses.