What must human beings be, to destroy what they can never create?

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

Without a knowledge of languages you feel as if you don't have a passport.

Art, especially the stage, is an area where it is impossible to walk without stumbling. There are in store for you many unsuccessful days and whole unsuccessful seasons: there will be great misunderstandings and deep disappointments… you must be prepared for all this, expect it and nevertheless, stubbornly, fanatically follow your own way.

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.

A woman can become a man's friend only in the following stages - first an acquantaince, next a mistress, and only then a friend.

Write about this man who, drop by drop, squeezes the slave's blood out of himself until he wakes one day to find the blood of a real human being--not a slave's--coursing through his veins.