Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

Never bring a cannon on stage in Act I unless you intend to fire it by the last act.

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 am dying. I haven't drunk champagne for a long time.

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!

It's better to live down a scandal than to ruin one's life.

I've been reading reviews of my stories for twenty-five years, and can't remember a single useful point in any of them, or the slightest good advice. The only reviewer who ever made an impression on me was Skabichevsky, who prophesied that I would die drunk in the bottom of a ditch.