It's immoral to steal, but you can take things.

To live simply to die is by no means amusing, but to live with the knowledge that you will die before your time, that's really is idiotic

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

I often wonder: suppose we could begin life over again, knowing what we were doing? Suppose we could use one life, already ended, as a sort of rough draft for another? I think that every one of us would try, more than anything else, not to repeat himself, at the very least he would rearrange his manner of life, he would make sure of rooms like these, with flowers and light ... I have a wife and two daughters, my wife's health is delicate and so on and so on, and if I had to begin life all over again I would not marry. ... No, no!

My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

A person loves to talk about his illnesses although that is the least interesting part of his life.

Oh, I don't object, of course, to cutting wood from necessity, but why destroy the forests? The woods of Russia are trembling under the blows of the axe. Millions of trees have perished. The homes of the wild animals and birds have been desolated; the rivers are shrinking, and many beautiful landscapes are gone forever. And why? Because men are too lazy and stupid to stoop down and pick up their fuel from the ground.