I have no faith in our hypocritical, false, hysterical, uneducated and lazy intelligentsia when they suffer and complain: their oppression comes from within. I believe in individual people. I see salvation in discrete individuals, intellectuals and peasants, strewn hither and yon throughout Russia. They have the strength, although there are few of them.

It is as acceptable now to love the wives of others as it is to smoke their cigars and read their books.

The world perishes not from bandits and fires, but from hatred, hostility, and all these petty squabbles.

Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.

One must speak about serious things seriously.

Money, like vodka, turns a person into an eccentric.

..when one has no real life, one lives by mirages. It's still better than nothing.