It's easier to write about Socrates than about a young woman or a cook.

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.

Write, write, write-till your fingers break.

Nothing lulls and inebriates like money; when you have a lot, the world seems a better place than it actually is.

When a person is born, he can embark on only one of three roads of life: if you go right, the wolves will eat you; if you go left, you’ll eat the wolves; if you go straight, you’ll eat yourself.

The aim of fiction is absolute and honest truth.

Those who come a hundred or two hundred years after us will despise us for having lived our lives so stupidly and tastelessly. Perhaps they'll find a means to be happy.