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

You will not become a saint through other people's sins.

Our pride and self-importance are European, while our development and actions are Asiatic.

A good upbringing means not that you won't spill sauce on the tablecloth, but that you won't notice it when someone else does.

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.

In Moscow you sit in a huge room at a restaurant; you know no one and no one knows you, and at the same time you don't feel a stranger. But here you know everyone and everyone knows you, and yet you are a stranger - a stranger... A stranger, and lonely...

To a chemist, nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as a chemist; he must abandon the subjective line; he must know that dungheaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and that evil passions are as inherent in life as good ones.