Do silly things. Foolishness is a great deal more vital and healthy than our straining and striving after a meaningful life.

If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.

To dine, drink champagne, raise a racket and make speeches about the people's consciousness, the people's conscience, freedom andso forth while servants in tails are scurrying around your table, just like serfs, and out in the severe cold on the street await coachmen--this is the same as lying to the holy spirit.

I swear fearfully at the conventions of the stage.

He had two lives: one, open, seen and known by all who cared to know, full of relative truth and of relative falsehood, exactly like the lives of his friends and acquaintances; and another life running its course in secret. And through some strange, perhaps accidental, conjunction of circumstances, everything that was essential, of interest and of value to him, everything in which he was sincere and did not deceive himself, everything that made the kernel of his life, was hidden from other people.

I confess I seldom commune with my conscience when I write.

Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.